


slightly delayed

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, F/M, Season/Series 05, Space Pirates, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2019-11-08 04:49:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17974796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: After weeks spent serving Kasius, Jemma is sold to a new master. Far from the Lighthouse, she'll have to find her own way home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know there's that one extra scary tag up there but there's a reason it's followed immediately by 'unreliable narrator.'

 

 _If it’s darkness we’re having, let it be extravagant.  
_ —Jane Kenyon, "Taking Down The Tree"

 

The air in the arena is warm. Whether that’s due to its location within the Lighthouse or the heat the fighters are creating—one of them _is_ a pyrokinetic—is anyone’s guess. Though he lounges in his seat, looking at ease while men battle to the death beneath him, Kasius is on edge. Everyone from his slaves to his guards knows it and is equally tense as a result. Only Sinara seems calm and collected, but who can really tell with her?

“Jemma,” Kasius says, his voice sharp as though he’s had to call her more than once. Unless her implant is malfunctioning, there’s little chance of that; she can’t _help_ but hear his call.

All the same, she hurries to his side, only remembering his stern instructions this morning that she must appear graceful and poised when she’s halfway to him. Thankfully, his back is to her and he doesn’t seem to have noticed. Sinara has though. Damn.

“My guest would like an Antaran slug,” he says, waving her to his companion.

Of course none of the guards move, so Jemma’s forced to squeeze through between them and Kasius’ chair and then into the narrow space beside the other. She’s standing so close to the pirate she can feel the warmth coming off of him more than the heat of the fight. His graying hair is slicked back, but that’s the only real part of him (assuming it  _is_ real) that’s visible. His deep blue robe is even more lavish than Kasius’ and trimmed in what Jemma guesses to be real silver. Through his mask, it’s impossible to tell, but from the tilt of his head it’s unlikely he’s looking at the slugs on the platter she’s lowered to his elbow. She swallows thickly, thinking it’s just her luck that she’s in the exact position she so hoped to avoid this morning.

Things were in chaos already when she and the other slaves were awakened by the buzzing of their implants. She and a handful of others were removed from the group and rushed out before they had time to do more than dress, no time for make-up at all. Several of the girls averted their faces as if embarrassed when they passed a line of young people going the other direction. None of them were slaves—at least not of the same variety—and Jemma just saw signs of a newly placed Inhuman implant on the last one before she was stepping into the atrium.

No Kasius, thank goodness, but Sinara was there. The slaves arranged themselves into two rows, facing one another. Sinara paced between them, eyeing them all critically, that narrowed gaze traveling over each one at length. When she got to her, Jemma struggled to maintain the empty mask she’d adopted soon after being forced into servitude.

“You,” Sinara said finally, “are Kasius’ favorites.”

Behind the mask, Jemma waved her hands and uttered a sarcastic _yay_. She was so pleased to hear it.

“You’re the most beautiful humanity has to offer, which isn’t saying much. But our incoming guest taught Kasius his appreciation for human beauty and, as one of House Kasius’ allies, we want to please him. If you haven’t been here long enough to serve Dred before, be honored. Your people—when they were even more primitive than they are now—worshiped his as gods. Remember that.” She stopped before Jemma, a faint smile touching her lips. “And if he takes … special notice of you, remember your _place_.”

She moved away, greeting Kasius at the door, but Jemma kept her focus straight ahead. One of the other girls, older than most in Kasius’ service, made a swift motion with her hands. In the brief time Jemma had been among them, she had never seen any of the slaves use their own brand of sign language where the Kree might see them. To do so now, the message must be considered of the utmost importance.

 _Lie_ , it said—or, perhaps, _selective untruth—_ followed by _caution_. The particulars were still beyond her, but Jemma understood the meaning. It was a reassurance to those of them who, as Sinara had said, never served this Dred before. They should be wary but it was unlikely he would take any “special notice” of them.

Or so Jemma hoped it had meant. Now, with the weight of his attention on her (and Kasius’; he’s practically salivating for Dred’s approval and, as such, is watching closely), she wonders if she misinterpreted the message. She tries to focus on her memory of the movement rather than on Dred or the slowly burning ache in her lower back.

Just when she’s sure her spine will snap in two any second if she doesn’t straighten it soon,one gloved hand finally lifts. It could be simply a miscalculation that the soft leather brushes her arm before rounding the edge of the platter to pluck up one one of the still-oozing slugs. She hopes it’s a miscalculation.

As soon as Dred has turned his attention back to the fight, she stands, and backs swiftly out of his reach and away from the crowd of spectators to where Mara (not the girl’s real name, of course, but Jemma has to call her _something_ even in her own mind) is waiting with a carafe of wine. She’s settled in place just in time to see Dred lean forward. She’d wondered whether he might remove the mask and give them all a look at his face in order to eat, but it appears he wasn’t hungry at all. He drops the slug on the stone ledge separating them from the fight. The tiny body twists and flips. Jemma swears she can smell the sweet scent of cooked meat, even at this distance. In no time at all the slug is blackened.

Dred nods to Kasius appreciatively. Kasius beams in response. Around them, a small measure of tension goes out of Kasius’ slaves and servants. Only Jemma remains stiff, her hand itching from her brief contact with the pirate.

 

=====

 

Later, Jemma lets her vision lose focus. There are no more slugs on her platter to turn her stomach, but what’s happening a few feet away might. Kasius is selling another Inhuman. Not the pyrokinetic. She doesn’t know what this one’s power is but the brief look she had at him told her he’s younger than Abby. Thinking of them both, still practically children, sold off to fight in other people’s wars is sickening. She knew, of course, that that’s what this was all about. No one ever comes to this outpost for any other reason, at least none she can discern from her prison here in the lower levels. That doesn’t make her feel any better about it.

So she ignores the atrocity happening just a few feet away and lets her mind wander. Her skin, wherever it isn’t covered, is cold after the heat of the arena. Her face paint is peeling near her ear and it’s driving her _crazy_. She keeps imagining Daisy’s incredulous face if she ever saw her in this getup. But then she always hopes Daisy never sees it because that would mean she was _here_ and Kasius would know she’s an Inhuman and one day she’d be sold like all the rest and there is just _no way_ that Jemma would be able to ignore _that-_

“Jemma.”

She moves on autopilot at first, coming away from the wall to offer one of the gelatinous half-orbs on her tray to Kasius, and only once she’s there does she come out of her hazy thoughts to see his smile’s gone cold. He doesn’t take any of the food. Instead Mara takes the tray from her hands and backs away, leaving her standing dumb and confused in the center of attention. Her tongue wants to ask _what’s going on,_ and she just might dare to (she has always been dangerously curious) except that she sees the white controller—another, because they already finished the transaction of the young boy—pass from Kasius to Dred. There’s nothing special about it, nothing at all to set it apart from any other. But Jemma _knows_ this one is different.

“I’m sure you will be most pleased with h-” she hears Kasius say just before he releases his hold. He keeps speaking but she can’t hear a word of it. Not only because none of it’s directed at her, but because she doesn’t belong to him anymore.

Slowly, as if caution will make the truth less terrible, she follows the length of Dred’s arm up to the silver mask still covering his face. The eyes are large and opaque, like an inverse of Kasius’ preferred make-up with its exaggerated eye-sockets. They reflect her own pale face back at her. He jerks his head and her reflection stretches before he gives her his back.

She hesitates, just a fraction of a second, before falling into step behind the more attentive Inhuman. Kasius has made his deal and her own reluctance won’t change that. All anyone here will be is annoyed at her for delaying the inevitable. So she forces herself to put one foot in front of the other and follow her new owner.

 

=====

 

There’s an alien waiting at the airlock. Green and yellow skin. She thinks at first he’s wearing a headdress much like a woman’s headscarf, but when he sees her trailing at Dred’s heels he raises one eyebrow, and one corner of the supposed cloth lifts with it. It’s a neck-frill, she realizes. Or a head-and-neck-frill since it begins at the top of his head and wraps down around his chin.

Any curiosity she feels about it or about his species is distant, however, as he steps through the airlock ahead of Dred. Her focus drops to the metal joinings, the very edge of the Lighthouse’s border. Once she crosses it, she’ll be leaving her friends behind. They’ll likely never know what became of her and, even if they did somehow discover it, they don’t exactly have the means of finding her out in the vast reaches of space.

She’ll never see them again.

A gloved hand appears in her vision. Dred. He thinks she’s uncertain of her footing. Or, more likely, he’s trying to hurry her up.

She considers, briefly, the wisdom of fighting. But she decided weeks ago that playing along, appearing to be a cowering and obedient servant, would be best. Dred has less reason to suspect her than Kasius (maybe; there’s no telling what he told him) but playing nice now can only help her later.

She takes the hand and allows him to guide her past him. The edge of his robe sways against her legs as she steps into a ship that is smaller than a standard quinjet. There are two chairs in the cockpit and four more lined up behind them and room for little else. The Inhuman boy is already in one of the rear seats, turned away with a sour look on his face. At least Jemma’s not alone in her feelings about being traded like an object. Dred leaves her in the seat beside him, his fingers briefly tightening around hers before the supple leather slips away from her skin.

So that’s it then. She’s not surprised, more … disappointed. She had thought, if she was unlucky enough to end up here, that it would happen back on the Lighthouse. It would happen and it would be perhaps the single worst experience of her life, but it would be over. She clasps her hands in her lap but it does nothing for her shaking. She can feel it in her lungs, in her bones. She just might shake to pieces here on the floor.

The ship rocks and she grips the arms of the chair, giving herself a stern reminder that they are in space, there’s no danger at all of falling out of the air here.

They’ve detached. Past the backs of chairs and the heads of Dred and his pilot, she can see the asteroids that remain of the Earth drift lazily upward in her view. Then a kick comes from the rear of the vessel and they sail forward, straight at the nearest asteroid.

She gasps at the same second they turn, sailing to one side. Another asteroid waits in their path and they avoid that too. In and out, up and down, through a whole sea of them with all the grace of a starling through the branches of their home tree.

It’s a bracing, exciting ride and, in the dark of the cabin, she can pretend she’s riding some amusement park simulator and in no real danger. When the sky opens up, revealing a glowing silver disc, the last remains of her fear disappear entirely. She stands, bending forward past the chairs ahead of her to better see the moon.

Its face is different. More large craters mar its surface. But it’s still her moon, the same one she spent countless nights gazing up at.

Perhaps it’s silly, when the Earth is rubble and dust, but there’s something comforting in knowing her satellite is still whole, still circling the remains of the world it guarded for countless millennia.

A bright flash of green at the edge of her available vision grabs her attention. The alien has turned in his seat to regard her and his colorful skin has caught the light from the moon. At the same time Jemma remembers her position here (if she’s gonna pretend to play nice, she probably should’ve stayed in her seat like a good little slave), she realizes she was wrong about him. She assumed this ship had the same orientation as a human-built aircraft, putting the pilot’s seat on the left, but Dred is the one guiding them towards the moon’s southern edge.

The alien says something and his frill lifts briefly in her direction. Dred glances over his shoulder towards her. Jemma shrinks back, resuming her seat and putting her hands beneath her thighs to hide their shaking.

She waits, expecting a rebuke or a slap or worse. She was grateful that, though Kasius’ temper was often aroused, he was content with ruling through fear, and any physical punishments he wrought were sure to be quick and final. There’s no telling what sort of master Dred will turn out to be. (Though, as an old friend of Kasius’ and his entire, no doubt, horrid family, Jemma could make a few guesses, were she in the mood to be even more depressed.)

As the minutes pass and she dares to look up, she discovers he’s still flying them onward, towards the vaguely sturgeon-shaped vessel hiding just beneath the moon’s rim. Perhaps he has to. Perhaps the alien can’t fly at all. Perhaps he’s only waiting, knowing she must be quaking in terror and letting her fear punish her for him.

She curls her fingers beneath her thighs, pressing her nails through the thin fabric of her pants. She is afraid, there’s no denying that, but she isn’t powerless. She’s spent weeks going along with Kasius the way she went along with Whitehall and Bakshi. She knows how to bide her time and, while she may not have a team backing her up the way she did before, she’s not a damsel. She survived Hydra, survived Maveth, survived the bloody Framework. She’ll survive this and, when she’s done, Dred will regret ever laying eyes on her.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 _Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while._  
—William Goldman,  _The Princess Bride_

 

Jemma knows a medical ward when she sees one. The bright lights and sterile surfaces can’t be for anything else. (Except, perhaps, interrogation. But the lack of restraints belies that possibility.)

The medic is pink. Bright, neon pink. Other than that, she could almost be human and her smile is a comforting one. Not that it does much good when Dred is hovering at Jemma’s back. She speaks, and while her words are lost on Jemma, the inviting motion is a clear order for her and the young Inhuman to enter the sickbay.

He’s first, escorted to one of the beds and ordered to open his mouth. When he pouts, a long, monkey-ish tail wraps around the bed to smack him in the back of the head. Jemma looks away, focusing on the available supplies. Some she recognizes, some she can guess the uses of, others she has no frame of reference for at all. She takes special notice of what is obviously a surgical tray on a nearby counter. The medic is occupied and Dred’s been distracted by another alien, this one with skin like the side of a mountain. She’s had ample experience lately at avoiding others’ notice, surely traversing just a few short feet shouldn’t be an issue.

But halfway there and Dred looks up sharply. Not at her, at something the medic’s said. Any hope Jemma has of laying hands on one of those scalpels is dashed when he turns towards her. She stiffens as he crosses the room, sure she’s about to be punished for her attempt, only to have him pass her by. He grabs up the tray and delivers it to the medic. He must say something to her because she laughs, open-mouthed and head thrown back.

No one on the Lighthouse would have dared to laugh at Dred.

She says something back, something sarcastic if Jemma’s reading her expressions correctly, but receives no visible punishment. Then she’s back to examining the Inhuman, focusing especially on the implant visible at the back of his neck. Curious and with nothing left to occupy her now she’s been foiled, Jemma moves subtly nearer to see what she’s doing. Does Dred prefer a different sort of implant for controlling his Inhuman slaves?

At least the poor boy doesn’t appear distressed. Whatever the medic’s telling him, whether it’s true or not, he’s lost his surly expression and is listening attentively. When she has him lie down on his side and injects him with something, the only sign he’s at all afraid is the tight fist resting on his hip.

The medic pets his cheek a time or two, easing him down to sleep. Once he’s resting easily, she looks up to meet Jemma’s eyes. She hadn’t realized until just now how close she’s gotten and quickly backs away until her progress is stopped by another bed. Her gaze hits the floor; she is dutiful, respectful, everything Kasius expected of his seen-and-not-heard slaves. At the edge of her vision, she sees a blur that, from its color and position, can only be that elongated tail. It doesn’t strike her though and, after a moment, she dares lift her eyes far enough to see that there’s another conversation happening between Dred and the medic. She’s exasperated again, while Dred’s mask hides whatever he might be feeling. It turns in Jemma’s direction and she swiftly drops her eyes.

She was wrong, it turns out. Dred’s mask hides his face, but the hand gripping the knife on his belt is tense. She watches it, expecting condemnation or an order not to get in the way. When he turns towards her and that hand loosens, she thinks she might even get that slap she’s been fearing ever since the transport ship. Instead, he takes hold of her, hands closing over her hips and lifting her. Instinctively, she grips his forearms. She’s stiff in his embrace and fruitlessly searches that blank mask for some explanation as to his intentions.

It’s over as soon as it began however, and he drops his hands away, leaving her sitting on the edge of the bed. The medic waves him impatiently aside and brings down a metallic arm from above the bed. She fixes what appears to be a tablet made of solid crystal into the arm’s three-pronged hand. Then she positions that beside Jemma’s head and grips her chin, clearly communicating that she wants her to remain in place.

Jemma does, deciding it’s the safest course of action, but can’t help that her eyes turn as far to the side as they’re able, watching the tablet light up a pale pink. She wishes she could ask what it’s doing to her. She doesn’t _feel_ any negative effects—no pain or lightheadedness.

The tail snaps inches away from her face and only weeks in Kasius’ service prevents her from jerking away. The last six inches of the tail flatten out, pointing to Jemma’s right. She follows the motion and this time can’t help turning to better see the maze of pink and yellow pinpricks hovering beside her. The lights turn with her and, by relaxing her eyes just right, she can see that it’s a holographic 3D model of her own head.

The medic touches Jemma’s chin again, indicating she wants her to remain where she is. She moves her hands into the model, opening it up much as Jemma would have opened a schematic on the Bus’s holotable. Her brain is, figuratively, exposed, and a web of blue joins the light pinks and yellows.

Jemma longs for a recording of this which she could manipulate on her own. It’s fascinating, not only for the technology itself, but how few people get to see the inside of their own skulls?

The dark figure of Dred moving to stand opposite her allows for greater contrast, but his presence does put a damper on her interest. His hand is resting casually on the knife, which she can’t help noticing is so big it could easily pass right through her torso. The medic seems to be speaking to him about what they’re looking at and as the conversation lengthens, a thread of not-quite-hope curls around Jemma’s heart. Perhaps he didn’t purchase her for the reasons Sinara would have led her to believe, perhaps it was for her mind. If he’s made a habit of purchasing Inhumans from Kasius and if Kasius had cause to mention how she helped Abby-

A violent motion from Dred has her reeling back. Too far and the image dissolves into sparks.

The medic is there in a moment, resting a comforting hand on Jemma’s leg and a comforting tail over her shoulders while she bites off crisp syllables at Dred. After another brief exchange, she eases Jemma off the bed and gives her what she chooses to interpret as a supportive squeeze before moving away, back to the Inhuman. Jemma’s left with Dred, who motions for her to follow.

She has questions to mull over, dozens of them, but she tables them all for now. She focuses her attention on the ship’s layout. Doorways and hallways and dead-ends. She doesn’t know what, precisely, she might do with this information—it’s not as though she could escape from a spaceship as easily as a Hydra compound—but she’d rather have the information available than not. As such, she is aware that they’ve moved into crew quarters (she caught a glimpse inside one or two) but it doesn’t really hit her that their destination would be in this part of the ship until he’s opening a door for her.

He motions her inside and, though she stands only two feet from the door, the distance feels suddenly like miles. She can just make out the edge of a bed, lit up by the light from the hall. She’d thought- She’d hoped-

Her nails dig into her palms. It doesn’t matter what she thought or hoped, this is what’s happening. She sets her chin and focuses on the monumental act of putting one foot in front of the other. She doesn’t think about the next step to come or the one after that next or what it will be like when he presses her down onto that bed-

No. Just this step. And this one.

The cabin light comes on when she crosses the threshold and, faced with the white-sheeted bed, she turns, backing up to allow him the necessary space to enter.

She’ll let this happen. Not because she wants it but because she has to. So he’ll trust her. So she can escape.

He steps inside.

This is so she can escape.

The door slides shut behind him.

This is so she can-

His hand lifts from his knife and she can’t. She knows the smart thing to do here is not to fight, to close her eyes and think of home and pray it ends quickly, but she can’t _not_ fight. After keeping silent and telling herself she was picking her battles with Kasius and not simply taking the path of least resistance, she’s finally found her breaking point. She can’t just put her mind away and let this happen. She _won’t_.

She fights. She hits him and goes for the knife. She manages to get a hand around the hilt but her grip is wrong and the blade is too heavy, it slips from her grasp. His arms close around her, trying to trap her. She bends, angling her hips back to force more room and kicking and stomping with her slippered feet. Damn Kasius for not giving them proper footwear. It likely wouldn’t do her much more good, but it would _feel_ better.

She manages an elbow or two to his ribs before he pins her arms to her sides. Then she’s pushing up, fighting to overbalance him. All the strength in her legs and she’s up, feet off the floor, she can feel him straining beneath her, but he catches himself before she can bring her legs over her head. One of his legs moves forward and she knows before it’s happening that he’s turned her own trick against her. Without the ground beneath her feet, there’s nothing to stop him redirecting her built-up momentum forward.

She lands heavy against the bed. The air whooshes out of her lungs and her fight goes with it. She doesn’t move, just waits where she fell, one arm twisted beneath her, the other splayed to one side, and her legs curled awkwardly beneath her. She doesn’t hope that he’ll think she’s dead or knocked out, not when her shaking breaths are echoing about the room. He’s breathing heavily too, so at least there’s that. She’s winded him. It would have been better to have killed him but-

All at once she’s up, sitting on the edge of the bed and staring at him wide wide eyes.

“You-” she says and immediately gasps, too overcome to say more. She can hear herself.

Dred moves slowly, walking sideways in a wide circle to set the controller on the foot of the bed.

She swallows thickly, forcing her emotions back into line so she can speak. “Why?” If this is some sick game so she can hear herself while he violates her, she’d prefer the silence.

“It’s yours,” he says. There’s a mechanical quality to his voice. Whether that’s just because of the mask itself or because the mask hides some sort of deformity, she couldn’t guess. “Amala says the type of implant you have is more biological than mechanical. It’s not designed to come out unless the host dies. It’s too dangerous to remove. I’m sorry.”

She looks at the controller, but rather than take it, adjusts the uneven collar of her tunic, pulling it closed.

“These are your quarters,” Dred says. “Not mine.” Even through the mask, she can feel him staring. “I’ll have the tailor send you some new clothes.”

He steps towards the door. To go, she realizes. She wants to let him. Desperately. But she has to know.

“Will-” she starts, but when his attention snaps back to her, her courage fails her. She swallows again, thinking of May. She wants to be strong like May. “Will you want me to wear those clothes … when I come to your quarters?”

For long seconds he doesn’t answer and, though she knows she won’t find any answers there, she lifts her eyes to the mask. She looks small, reflected in those overlarge eyes. Small and frightened and weak. She lifts her chin, hoping he’ll see her differently.

“No,” he says, his voice crisp. “I’m not Kasius. You’re not here for that. You’re free.”

He’s gone before she can find her voice again.

 

=====

 

When he reaches the bridge, he spares only a moment to confirm with Krelah that their heading hasn’t changed and there’s nothing that requires his immediate attention. That done, he passes through his great cabin and into his private quarters beyond. Barring a ship-wide emergency, he should get at least a few minutes of privacy here.

He tears off the heavy scarf and gloves he stole from the wealthy guests on a cruiser six months back. He knew the second he saw them they’d impress Kasius but all the pomp and circumstance is almost too much trouble.

His hands freeze around his belt and knife. He stares at it, thinking of that moment she nearly lifted it from its sheath.

No, definitely not too much trouble, not with the prize he came away with this time.

He drops both the belt and knife on his dresser and takes a good, long look in the mirror. The mask stares back at him, cold and blank, utterly alien. It was a creation of Taryan’s; Kasius’ father still can’t stand the sight of him without the damned thing. It was meant to make him look more Kree while also keeping him distinctly separate. No wonder she was terrified of him.

He pulls it off and takes a good, long look at the face beneath. If she’d seen him like this, would she have been afraid?

His fingers curl around the hilt of the knife and the answer comes to him: if she’s smart. And she’s always been that.

He tears off the last of his fancy clothes and changes into something more comfortable, more fitting the infamous Captain Dred. Then, after one last look in the mirror, he affixes the mask to his face once more. He doesn’t typically wear it during the day-to-day on the ship, reserving it for meetings with members of the Kasius family or boarding parties when he doesn’t think his scars will strike the right note of fear, but the crew all know it and no one will question his decision to wear it more often. At least not openly.

Forget the lines the years have put on his face or that they’re too few, forget the nasty scar curling up his neck and around his jaw, he just _bought her_. He’s a goddamned pirate who’s friends with the guy who’s kept her enslaved for who knows how long. Aside from his real face, there’s nothing left in him of the man who Taryan pulled out of the dust and showing it off will only make this worse for her.

Until he figures out what to do with her, he’ll have to keep wearing the mask. She’s better off—they’re _both_ better off—if Will Daniels stays dead.

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 _Men have bled for their women, fought to protect their women, died for their women..._  
—Karen Straughan

 

True to his word, soon after Dred leaves, a tall, slim alien who puts Jemma in mind of the Greys of twentieth century sci-fi appears with an armful of garments for her. He introduces himself as Mzz and, after a very judgmental look over her current outfit, tells her to return the pile to him at her convenience; he’ll alter what she likes and keep what she doesn’t for the next new crewman. Then he’s gone before she can tell him she has no idea _where_ to return the garments.

She doesn’t know what to make of that. Not the leaving (that is obviously quite rude) but the implication she’s now a member of the crew.

She digs the controller from beneath the pile Mzz left and clutches it to her chest. Dred may have claimed she was free, but the truth is she still belongs to him. She has nowhere to go and will quite obviously be expected to serve on this ship in whatever capacity he requires.

But that _won’t_ be in his bed. He made that clear enough. Whatever else he might demand of her, she can take some solace in the fact it isn’t that.

With no pockets in her tunic (of course Kasius never considered usefulness when choosing his slaves’ atrocious uniforms), she searches the room for a safe place to leave the controller while she digs through the pile for something she can imagine wearing, only to let out a brief scream when she turns far enough to see the figure in her doorway.

“Sorry!” the medic says, lifting her tail and free hand in surrender. “I didn’t mean to scare you!”

“It’s all right.” Belying her own words, Jemma drops to the bed and clutches her heart. She hasn’t had a good fright in weeks, not since she blinked in a diner and found herself face-to-face with another monolith.

She spares a moment to think of the others. Her team who came with her this time and who she’s now been forced to abandon, and for poor Fitz all alone in the past. He spent _months_ searching for her the first time she was lost to a monolith, how long will he search fruitlessly for the entire team before getting on with his life?

“I wasn’t sure how best to get your attention,” the medic is saying, clearly babbling while she enters the room and dumps a second pile of clothes, these far more colorful, on the bed. “You had your back to the door and you wouldn’t have heard a knock or if I called, so I was trying to figure out-” She freezes, her eyes narrowing on Jemma. “You _did_ hear me.”

Bracing herself for the woman’s reaction (whatever Dred’s reasons for ostensibly freeing her, there’s no telling what his crew’s feelings will be), Jemma lifts the controller. “Captain Dred gave it to me.”

“Thank the stars. I thought I was going to have to sign this whole conversation. I’m Amala and these-” she shoves the pile to keep it from slipping to the floor- “are for you.”

“Mezz already brought me some clothes,” she says, suspecting she fouls up the man’s name terribly. Amala’s scrunched up nose is likely a good indication she has.

“Yeah, castoffs nobody wants. _These_ are clothes I’ve picked up around the galaxy only to find later they clashed with my complexion or were too constricting.” Her tail snaps irritably towards the pile. “I thought some of them might suit you.”

Jemma fingers the edging on a pale orange something-or-other. It looks heavy but feels like silk. “You picked them up? Meaning you stole them?”

Amala gives her a look similar to those she was giving Dred during Jemma’s check-up. “You’re on a pirate ship now, little one. Thievery’s how we get things done around here.”

Jemma’s no stranger to skirting that moral line for her own benefit, but always before she had the motivation of the greater good to protect her. If she lied or stole or killed, even if in the moment it was to protect herself, it was ultimately so she could continue SHIELD’s important work. But SHIELD’s gone, turned to dust and rubble with the rest of the Earth. Whatever crimes she commits now will truly be only for herself.

But those are heavy thoughts she’d rather not dwell on just now, especially when one of Dred’s trusted crewmen is standing over her.

She hefts the controller. “Anything I can carry this in?” Until she can figure a way to get this thing out of her head or, at the very least, turn it off permanently, she’d prefer to keep the controller with her.

“I’m sure we can find something.”

After a fair bit of digging and modeling, they discover a leather jacket amidst the clothes Mzz originally brought that has an internal pocket that just fits the controller. It’s also a few sizes too big and has rather obviously seen better days, as evidenced by the stitched gash beneath the left arm.

“I suppose this one’s previous owner put up a fight,” Jemma says wryly, only thinking better of the comment once it’s out.

Amala doesn’t appear insulted, only continues helping her roll up the sleeves to a more appropriate length. “He did, yes.” She smiles in the face of Jemma’s unease. “It was the captain’s. Likely he thought it was unsalvageable but Mzz isn’t about to let anything go until it’s only good for rags.”

Jemma twists, taking another look at the scar marring the jacket. She envisions Dred’s heavier build and tries to figure how deep the cut might have gone. Deep enough to draw blood at least, as she can see stains still hiding between the stitching.

“Something wrong?” Amala’s holding up the pale orange garment—which turns out to be a top—seeing how it might fit Jemma.

“Nothing. I’m just surprised by the color.” As that’s obviously not explanation enough, Jemma adds, “I would’ve thought Kree blood would be darker on the brown.”

“Kree blood?”

“You said this was the captain’s.” Jemma twists, allowing her to better see the stitching and the dark brown staining between them.

Amala continues to stare for a brief second before her eyes grow wide and a laugh escapes her. “You thought- A Kree! Oh, stars-” She tries to compose herself but every time her eyes fall on Jemma, she only laughs harder. “Oh, little one,” she sighs once she’s gotten through the worst of it. “It’s that damn mask, isn’t it?”

“So I’m guessing that means the captain is _not_ a Kree?” Jemma asks.

“If he is, he’s the strangest colored Kree I’ve ever seen. What made you think he was one?”

“On the Lighthouse they said humans used to worship his people. I know the Kree came to Earth millennia ago, I thought-”

Amala’s shaking her head. “Not Kree. Asgardian. They spent eons traipsing around the cosmos, fighting their wars and leaving legends behind. My people worshiped them too for a time. And somewhere in the midst of all this chaos, one of them spent a little too much time with one of our dear captain’s ancestors. So he’s not a full-blood; good for us because I can’t imagine him more rock-headed than he is now.”

“Ah,” is all Jemma can say. It’s a relief, honestly. She hates to stereotype but she’s never met a Kree who _wasn’t_ an utter arse. Trying to murder Daisy simply for an accident of her birth (which _they_ were the cause of, no less), tearing apart an entire town to hunt down one Inhuman, enslaving the entire human race. She supposes there must be a decent Kree somewhere in the cosmos, but until she meets them, she’s afraid the entire species must, in her estimation, rank somewhere near the Chitauri.

As for Asgardians, two of the three Jemma’s met personally were perfectly lovely people. And Coulson always had positive things to say about Thor. If the trend holds, Dred might not be so bad at all.

(The possibility he might be more like Lorelei than Randolph does cross her mind, but as he very specifically stated he does not intend on raping her, he’s at least better than the former.)

“You hungry?” Amala asks out of nowhere. She tosses aside the belt she’s holding. “You must be. I bet Kasius barely fed any of you. Let’s go.”

She laces her arm through Jemma’s, pulling her along into the corridor. With no choice but to follow, Jemma decides to make this a learning experience. The route to the mess is, at first, the reverse of her journey to her quarters. Only as they near the medbay does it change, with Amala pulling Jemma left instead of right. Three turns (two rights and a left that hardly counts as there was nowhere else to go) later, they’re stepping into a mess hall much the same as any cafeteria.

Amala walks her through the relatively simple process of retrieving food—at least Jemma trusts it must be food since people are eating it; there are fruits and vegetables she can’t identify and dishes she’d rather not and even, strangely enough, a dish that so closely resembles an Earth cheeseburger she can’t help but grab one for nostalgia’s sake. Once Jemma’s tray is loaded up, Amala takes her to a table at which sits a familiar face.

“You’re awake,” Jemma says, eagerly taking the seat across from the young Inhuman she traveled here with.

“You’re talking,” the boy says.

She only smiles in the face of his adolescent surliness and offers her hand. “I’m Jemma.”

He studies it for a second before giving her his. “Flint.”

Ignoring her food (and Amala’s pointed stare at it), Jemma leans forward to focus on Flint. “You were only brought to the lower levels recently, weren’t you?”

Flint takes a big bite of something which appears gelatinous but which he has to chew a great deal before swallowing. “Yeah. Kasius lowered the testing age because he wanted ‘options’ for his friend to choose from.” He scowls across the tables as if expecting to see the captain appear at the mere mention of his name.

But Jemma doesn’t care to ask about him. “Did you see anyone acting oddly before that? Anyone out of place who you hadn’t seen around before? Maybe anyone without a metric?”

Flint’s attention snaps to Jemma, but his scowl doesn’t fade. “You’re talking about those space cases Tess and Deke have been hanging out with, the ones causing trouble.”

As that does sound like her friends, Jemma can’t refute the accusation. “There would have been five of them, three women and two men.”

Flint goes on staring hard, which she takes as a yes.

“Were they all right when last you saw them?”

He scoffs. “Yeah. They were doing just fine. It’s everybody else you should be worrying about.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That nobody with two brain cells is gonna think it’s just some coincidence that Virgil went missing at the same time Deke starts hanging around with these guys or that they started working for Grill and almost right away his right-hand man doesn’t come back from a trawler run. Those people are dangerous and so far they’re the only ones not suffering for it.”

But they’re alive. It’s not, perhaps, the most important part of Flint’s speech, but it’s the part Jemma cares about. Her friends are getting into trouble the way they always do, but they’re surviving—or they were when Flint was last on the upper levels, which is the most recent news she can hope for.

A shadow falls over the table. “I heard the captain came back from the Lighthouse with fresh faces.”

“Frey,” Amala says to the man standing over them. She sounds almost relieved and Jemma can’t blame her. She certainly pushed Flint more than she ought to have when he was obviously unhappy with the direction of the conversation. She’ll have to make it up to him at some point. “This is Jemma and Flint. Flint’s an Inhuman.”

Frey drops down beside him on the bench. “Are you? What’s your power?”

Uncomfortable with the attention (or perhaps with his powers; he can only have had them for a few days at most and Jemma remembers how painful they still were for Daisy at that stage), Flint mutters what she understands after a moment’s interpretation to be “I move rocks.”

“Very nice,” Frey says. “Mine isn’t nearly so cool.”

“You’re an Inhuman?” Jemma asks. Frey certainly looks human, but then all the crew she’s seen so far are at least somewhat humanoid, there’s no reason to assume he wouldn’t be an alien.

He nods in acknowledgment. “But you’re not. I’ve never known the captain to buy one of the Kreeper’s human slaves.”

“Jemma’s going to help me in the medbay,” Amala says. “If you want to, of course. The captain told me you had some experience in that arena and you seemed to have an affinity for it. Besides, it would be useful to have someone to offer a second opinion.” The last sentence is said more forcefully and obviously not directed at Jemma.

“Ah, but we don’t all love the smell of disinfectant,” Frey says.

Amala rolls her eyes at his teasing grin, but can’t hide her own smile. “Frey’s power allows him to see where a person is injured, no matter how they try to hide it.”

“That isn’t exactly it. I see weak spots. Like that Amala’s tail is always dancing around, waiting for someone to grab it.”

Said tail slams down, stopping Frey’s hand before it can swipe what appears to be a blue potato chip from Amala’s tray and making Jemma jump, stiff in her seat. “I’d like to see someone try.”

Even while rubbing his hand, Frey turns that bright smile on Jemma. “Or,” he says as though he never stopped speaking, “that someone hasn’t eaten in hours.”

“Yes, thank you.” Amala pushes Jemma’s tray. “Here, try the glash. I know it looks like something foul but once you cut it open- Where’s your knife? You can’t eat glash without a knife.”

“I’ll go-” Frey begins.

Amala’s already beginning to turn back toward the line. “No, I’ll get it- Captain!”

All around them, crewmen jump to their feet. A heartbeat later, Flint and Jemma follow suit. With that horrid mask still in place, there’s no telling what Dred’s looking at, but Jemma’s skin prickles with awareness all the same. She keeps her fist at her side, willing her grip to relax. There’s a decent chance he didn’t see her slip the knife into the fold of her sleeve behind her back and she won’t do herself any favors by drawing attention to it.

The mask turns almost imperceptibly. Left, then right. He takes in the whole scene. “Knock it off!” Dred barks and the surrounding crewmen drop back to their seats and return to their conversations. While Amala hurries off to retrieve a new knife, Jemma sinks into her own seat and, with every ounce of willpower she possesses, forces herself to turn her back on Dred. Even with the weight of the controller against her side, her earlier fear isn’t easily forgotten.

“Captain,” Frey says.

“Frey. Making our new crewmen comfortable, I see.”

Frey slings an arm around Flint’s shoulders. The boy stiffens but doesn’t shrug him off. “I’m always happy to help my fellow Inhumans adjust to life on the outside.”

Dred makes no answer, but Jemma can feel him still standing behind her. Practiced as she is at hiding her reactions, she can’t help wrapping her arms around herself.

A knife appears in the center of Jemma’s vision. “Here. _Eat_ ,” Amala says.

Jemma hesitates just long enough to make sure the knife in her sleeve is secure before taking this one. Then she studies her plate. She knows Amala said the glash was good, but looking at the thick brown loaf, Jemma’s stomach turns.

“Try the burger,” Dred says, mechanized voice soft and disturbingly close. “It never disappoints.” He strides away and Jemma’s struck with a note of humor. All that looming and his parting words are a suggestion about the _food_? If her nerves weren’t still buzzing from her earlier scare, she might laugh at him.

Something slams into the back of Jemma’s head. “ _Eat_ ,” Amala says again.

Jemma shoots her a scowl before looking to Flint, feeling guilty she wasn’t more sympathetic when he received a tail to the head earlier. But he’s too busy eating to notice, not that she expects him to care about her apologies. Beside him, Frey is watching her intently. Perhaps he can sense the way her heart is still pounding; it certainly can’t be healthy.

In an effort to calm herself, she picks up the burger. The name isn’t particularly surprising, not when so many of the crew are Inhumans. But, as cows were lost with the Earth, she’s curious to see whether their approximation of a burger lives up to the reality.

 

=====

 

The truth is it tastes more like chicken than beef and the cheese has a little of that blue cheese tang to it, but it’s still remarkably close to the genuine article and easily the best meal Jemma’s had since that diner. Afterward, Amala asks again if she might like to aid her in the infirmary and spends the next few hours showing her around the equipment, trying to win her over to the idea of assisting her.

Not that Jemma needs much convincing. She doubts there are many duties aboard a pirate ship, even one in space, that she’ll be suited for. Besides, Dred obviously purchased her for just this purpose and, as she’ll need to keep him happy if she’s to have any hope of escaping and returning to the Lighthouse and her friends, it’s best to do what he so clearly expects of her and to do it well.

The only question she’s left with then is what she’ll do after. As she sees herself back to her quarters (she assured Amala she could find her own way and is determined to make this the first test of her observations), she can’t help but wonder what her plan really is. Surely escaping forced servitude is an admirable goal, but going back to the Lighthouse will only put her in a worse position than she’s in here. If Kasius discovers her, he’ll either enslave her again or return her to Dred. And, even if he doesn’t, what does she really intend to _do_? It’s not as though she and the others can piece the Earth back together. Much as she wants to reunite with her friends, there is quite literally nowhere she can think to go from there.

She’ll just have to trust that _they’ll_ be working that bit out. Flint said they were causing trouble, no doubt rebelling against Kasius’ rule. Coulson always has a plan. That just leaves it to her to make herself available to be part of it.

Resolve in place, Jemma turns the final corner and finds herself at her own door. She opens it as Amala instructed her to (her genetic profile was programmed into the ship’s computer and she cannot _wait_ to learn more about the security system) and finds herself unable to step inside.

She stood just here a few hours ago. And the doorway was wide like this. Dred was here beside her, but it doesn’t seem his absence does much to lessen the ache in her chest. Maybe she really should have asked Frey if he saw something wrong with her heart, it’s hurting terribly now. The sight of the bed, partially lit up by the light from the hall, sends a wave of nausea through her.

“Stop it,” she whispers. “Just _stop it_. You’re being ridiculous. _Nothing happened_.”

Intellectually she knows that’s the case, but still her feet feel glued to the floor and she can’t stop thinking about what _might_ have happened on the-

She’s always been naturally curious above all else, so of course it’s curiosity that has her taking that first step forward. Sure enough, when she crosses the threshold and the lights click on in response, she sees something out of place. The pile of clothes is at the end of the bed, precisely where she and Amala left it, but there was nothing at the head of the bed when they left.

In the two steps it takes to cross the room, she wonders if it might be a belt that she’s just forgetting got tossed aside. But, standing over it, that isn’t the case at all. There _is_ a belt, thick and strong. It would have to be to support the weight of the long knife resting in its scabbard. Dred’s knife.

Jemma reaches out to take it, just to confirm it’s real. Comparatively, the flimsy steak knife in her sleeve is almost comically light. _This_ is a weapon.

She looks around, half-expecting Dred to leap from the shadows, but finds herself utterly alone. She looks down at the knife between her hands again.

She has no idea what to make of it.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 _I have a need of silence and of stars;  
_ _Too much is said too loudly  
_ _—_ William Alexander Percy, "Home"

 

 

Jemma’s been sitting long enough on the metal floor that it’s no longer icy cold but it _is_ terribly uncomfortable against her tailbone. She forces herself to remain still, putting those weeks of servitude to good use and disappearing in plain sight. Her attention is torn between Flint—his hands fisted so tight on his knees she fears he’s hurting himself, the beads of sweat forming on his brow—and the ornate chestpiece that commands all of his attention.

Slowly, softly, the convex sheet of metal begins to tap against the floor. Its shadow grows incrementally, a sign the whole structure is lifting off the ground. Flint’s not moving it—or not moving _all_ of it—his goal is the sapphire near the piece’s shoulder. It makes no sound, but Jemma can see it straining, struggling to come loose of the metal holding it in place. It twists, a fraction to the left, a fraction to the right, then more forcefully.

“It’s all right,” she says softly, not wanting to break Flint’s concentration. “It was placed there, it can be removed. You only need to find-”

With a crack louder than seems possible for so small a stone, the sapphire shatters. Glittery shards explode across Flint’s quarters and Jemma recoils, closing her eyes and pulling Flint to the ground with her.

Heedless of her protective hold, he leaps up to stomp around the room. “Dammit,” he says. “Dammit dammit _dammit_.”

“You did wonderfully,” Jemma says. She doesn’t stand. She simply returns to her previous position on the floor, conscious of her hands and her arms and the need to keep her muscles loose so that Flint won’t think she’s frightened of him.

He turns an incredulous look her way. It’s so overdramatic she wants to laugh, but holds back. “I _blew. It. Up_ ,” he says—slowly, like she’s a particularly slow child.

“You did,” she agrees. “And you have to admit that’s impressive. _I_ certainly couldn’t blow anything up, not without the appropriate chemicals and hopefully a remote detonator.”

“She’s right.” At the sound of a man’s voice, they both turn to see Frey lounging in the doorway. “It was very cool.”

A ghost of a smile tugs at one corner of Flint’s mouth. Jemma gives Frey a real one, grateful for his input. She’s managed to smooth over her initial faux pas with Flint and he seems to have forgiven her for being friends with her team, but in the handful of sessions like this they’ve had she’s come to discover that what he really needs—more than someone to help him with his powers or even his freedom from Kasius—is a parent, someone he might look up to and who might guide him through these next perilous years into adulthood. Whether Flint recognizes this need or not, he’s obviously latched onto Frey. His praise will do far more for Flint’s progress than Jemma’s, no matter they’re effectively saying the same things.

“Maybe, yeah,” Flint says, dragging his toes through the glittery sheen on the floor. “But now it’s broken. Mzz is gonna be mad.”

Jemma hadn’t thought of that. Mzz certainly wanted the jewels removed from the chestpiece, but he would have been more than willing to do the work himself. It took no small amount of arguing on Jemma’s part to get him to hand it over to her at all. She struggles to find a positive angle or a reassurance but comes up empty.

“Kid,” Frey says. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the _rez'Awahra_ is a pirate ship. We’ll get Mzz some more pretty rocks to play with soon enough.”

“We will?” Flint asks, focusing on the completely wrong part of Frey’s statement.

Frey doesn’t seem to think so, however, as he chuckles. “Yeah, we will. In fact, I was hoping you might wanna come down to the lower decks with me, do a little strength training. If Jemma’s done with you?”

Flint’s pleading look is immediate, all wide eyes and nearly-quivering lip. While Jemma would certainly like to keep exploring the limits of his abilities, there’s none of the urgency there was with Abby, who was going to be forced into battle whether she was ready or not, or with Daisy, whose powers were killing her. And that puppy dog face is far too powerful to be denied.

“If you think lifting weights and punching things will be more fun than moving rocks with your mind-”

“Yes!” Flint nearly bowls Frey over in his rush out the door.

Despite this, Frey seems content to wait for Jemma to rise at a much slower pace. His reason why becomes apparent when she reaches the doorway and he says, “You’re good with him.”

She smiles up at him. “So are you. He looks up to you.” She hopes Frey recognizes the responsibility that accompanies that.

“I know. He’s a good kid.” He throws a warm smile down the hall to where Flint is impatiently waving at him to hurry up.

“He is,” Jemma agrees. “A kid.”

Her warning tone doesn’t go unnoticed, nor does its cause. “We all have our responsibilities on the _Awahra_ ,” he says. “Even people like you and Amala who’ll hang back need to know how to fight. It’s a dangerous life out here. No Kree to pamper and protect you.” Before she can react to the harsh words, his hand brushes her hair. She flinches, surprised by the intimate gesture, only to see him hold out a particularly large chunk of sapphire. He drops it carelessly to the floor. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sure it was a hard life, in its way, but this is a different kind of hard. You need to learn to adapt.”

“I have,” she says, thinking of the uprising, of Hydra, of Maveth. Sometimes it seems all she ever does is adapt to a new reality.

“Good.” Frey’s hand is heavy on her shoulder. “Because he likes you too. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.” He gives her a warm smile before turning away and she’s left with an uncomfortable squeamishness in the pit of her stomach.

She appreciates the sentiment, as well as the affirmation that Flint doesn’t completely hate her for nagging him to practice with his powers, but she rests a hand on her shoulder as she follows more slowly the path Frey took. When he pulled the shard from her hair she thought, for just a moment, that he might … what? Did she think he was just going to kiss her in the middle of the hall? No, that’s ridiculous. She certainly doesn’t feel that way for Frey and while he’s an eternally friendly fellow, he’s done nothing to indicate that kind of partiality towards her.

But there was that spark of awareness, of an intimacy she hasn’t known since … since Fitz.

It felt like cheating.

On a dead man—a feeling Jemma is all too familiar with. She hesitated for months to begin things with Fitz, first because of Trip and then Will. And then, when they finally did begin, she had to always struggle and push and grab for more, it seemed like, to keep that guilt at bay. It felt like ages before she could go a day without it souring her sweet moments.

And now here she is again, she thinks. Her path diverged from Frey and Flint’s sometime during her private musings and she finds herself entering the medbay, glad to find it deserted as that saves her the trouble of explaining her frown to Amala. If she ever finds someone in this nightmarish future who she can have truly deep feelings for, she’ll have to drag her heart through that grief and guilt all over again.

She doesn’t know that it will be worth it.

On that depressing thought, she logs into one of the bay’s computers to add today’s breakthrough to Flint’s file. After that, there really isn’t much for her to do. She could disinfect, but from the faint chemical smell lingering the air it seems that’s already been recently done. Perhaps she’ll take this uncommon opportunity to play with the soul forge Amala used on her that first day. Technically she hasn’t been trained her on its use yet, but how difficult can a quantum field generator be, really?

She takes a quick look out into the hall, just to be sure Amala isn’t going to walk in on her the second she turns the thing on. Then, just to be safe, decides to check Amala’s office. It’s been quiet as space can be ever since Jemma entered, but perhaps Amala’s only napping and will rouse at the sound of the soul forge powering on.

It’s a good thing she thought to check because the medbay isn’t as deserted as she thought. Amala is in her office, but she isn’t alone. Both she and the man she’s tending have their backs to the door, allowing Jemma a good view of broad shoulders, dark hair tinged with grey, and a bare back marked with a trail of deep blue.

The lines twist and coil, emerging like the filaments of a flower from a wicked burn scar that covers a full third of his lower back, and stretching out of sight over his right shoulder. Though she’s never seen a scar like these, the blue marks can be nothing else. However old they are, they must still hurt because when Amala brushes a viscous substance over them, the man hisses, the sound somehow both a tense and a release.

When Amala reaches into the jar cradled in her tail for more of the gel, she nearly drops it. “Jemma!”

The man’s hand immediately moves, reaching out to the edge of the bed he’s seated on to grab up the mask lying on the pillow.

“I’m sorry,” Jemma says while he fixes the mask in place. She caught a brief glimpse of his turned head when she startled him, just enough to see that those scars keep twining up his neck. “I’m sorry,” she says again, embarrassingly at a loss for words. “I was-” Coming to see whether Amala were here so that she might do something of which she likely wouldn’t approve? Obviously she can’t say that. And even more obviously she can’t stay where she is. She backs hastily out of the office and around the doorway so that she can no longer see or be seen.

She hits the wall, jarring her back painfully. The metal is cold, but that’s good. It distracts from the return of that feeling in the pit of her stomach and the heat it brings with it this time.

Hearing the others moving about in the office still, she covers her face (it’s warm too, bugger) with her hands. What is _wrong_ with her? That was Dred. _Dred_. The man who bought her. The man who is friends with Kasius. The _pirate_.

But behind her closed eyes she sees the toned musculature beneath the scars, the inherent strength in those bare arms. She touched them once. Right here in this very room when he lifted her up onto one of the beds.

And she was afraid he was going to do more than that, she reminds herself sternly. Memory of those fears washes away the heat of her— _completely understandable_ —lust. She drops her hands to her sides. She was just thinking about Fitz and about the possibility of one day maybe moving on. Clearly those thoughts, coupled with the unfortunate timing of seeing Dred’s bare back and the fact she’s gone months without any sort of male companionship, have all joined together to result in this uncomfortable outcome. It’s nothing to do with Dred at all, it’s just her libido and her biological clock turning against her. She’d likely have had the same reaction to _Hive_ if she’d happened upon him in similar conditions.

Just as she’s reasoned herself out of her embarrassment, Dred emerges. Fully clothed and masked, he stalls briefly when he sees her, as if he too is self-conscious about the encounter. (She wouldn’t be surprised. There must be a reason Amala was treating him in the privacy of her quarters rather than out here where anyone might happen upon them.) Then he leaves, without a word or any acknowledgment beyond his hesitation.

Amala comes out next, wiping her hands on a rag while her tail twitches lazily behind her head. “You could’ve knocked.”

“I will next time.” Jemma will _always_ knock. For the rest of her life.

Amala’s lips curve in a sardonic smile.

“Should I go after him?” Jemma asks, hoping the answer is no. “Apologize?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just a little inconsiderate is all, and a pirate of all people can’t complain about being barged in on.”

Jemma doesn’t smile at the joke. “I mean for invading his privacy. That’s why he wears the mask all the time, isn’t it? To hide the scars?”

“He doesn’t.” Amala crosses the lab to deposit the rag in a sterilizing trash bin embedded in the wall. The rag will be analyzed and either incinerated and the remains ejected into space or deemed safe for recycling and whisked off to the laundry room. “Wear it all the time, that is. Or he didn’t until recently.” She turns back, eyes narrowing on Jemma before widening in a kind smile. “And don’t worry about it, little one. You did nothing wrong.”

Jemma forces herself to relax, though she can’t help feeling Amala’s reassurances are rather empty. She decides to turn the conversation to a subject she’s more comfortable with. “What were you doing? Was the gel for pain or cosmetic reasons or-” She trails off, suddenly considering that perhaps she wasn’t entirely wrong to be aroused by what she waked in on. “It was – medical? Wasn’t it?”

Amala’s tail freezes for a brief moment and then she bursts out with a laugh. “No offense,” she says, still giggling, “but most of your kind are so pale.” She pokes at Jemma’s cheek. “I _know_ you’re healthy but on my planet anyone that color is deathly ill. Not exactly attractive. Though-” she pauses, eyes going far away before she throws Jemma a wink- “those shoulders?”

Despite her earlier reasoning that it was nothing to do with Dred at all, Jemma’s cheeks burn.

“Now _that_ is a healthy color,” Amala says and changes the subject to a quiz on the ship’s surgical capabilities. Jemma is happy for the shift and for the quiz, which she passes with flying colors.

 

=====

 

Engrossed as she’s been working with Amala and Flint, Jemma hasn’t spared much thought for _the rez’Awahra’s_ engineering. It’s clear however, as she gazes up through the curved window of the viewing gallery at stars that are as unfamiliar to her as Maveth’s once were, that the engines have been working tirelessly. They’ve come a long distance in a relatively short amount of time.

Her plans to return to the others might not be as easily realized as she’d hoped.

The floor here is carpeted to allow visitors to lie on their backs to better enjoy the view. Jemma’s glad she hadn’t chosen to make use of it when she hears the sound of footsteps shuffling over the thick weave. And even gladder when she catches a glimpse of that silver mask.

She refuses to look directly at him, even when she can feel him studying her for long minutes.

Finally he turns his attention to the purpose of this room—or turns his face at least, because his words have nothing to do with the view. “You’re not carrying the knife.”

She’d almost forgotten about the weapon now hidden beneath her bed. “I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

His shoulders droop. “You can do whatever you like. I just thought it would be more useful than a steak knife.”

So he did see that. She gives up pretending to care about the stars and turns to face him. He’s not angry about her stealing a knife. He’s not going to rape her. He gives her her hearing and her sight back and the freedom to control whether they’re taken again.

She thinks of that last day on the Lighthouse and the image Sinara painted of Dred. One of the older slaves warned that it was a lie. Is this what she meant? Perhaps Jemma should have considered her warning more carefully.

The longer she studies the blank mask, the more convinced she becomes that Dred is now the one avoiding looking at her.

“You’re hiding from me, aren’t you?” she asks with that same certainty she feels whenever she knows she’s landed on the right theory.

Now he does face her. “Why would I do that?”

Perhaps there’s a warning in his tone or perhaps it’s the mechanism that filters his voice making her think there’s one. Either way, she has the sense to hesitate, but if he wanted her to hold her tongue, he never should’ve given her her voice back. “Kasius said you liked beautiful things.”

“That’s not a crime.”

Her arms tighten across her chest. “I didn’t say it was.”

“Your tone did.”

This conversation would be a whole lot easier if she could see his expression while having it. “I only meant,” she says carefully, “you value beauty. That’s why you bought me, isn’t it?” Perhaps it’s conceited to say it, but there’s no denying she’s beautiful, not when it’s why Kasius enslaved her in the first place.

He’s quiet for a long moment, long enough she starts to feel guilty for bringing up the subject at all. “Why do you think I’m hiding?” he asks finally, in lieu of an answer.

She breathes out slowly, turning her attention to the lower windows placed at eye level. They’re smaller and provide no view of any stars Jemma can see, but they’re at least something to look at besides her own reflection in the eyes of the mask. “Because you were injured,” she says, trying to adopt an aloof yet not unsympathetic medical tone. “Badly. Enough to scar someone who’s partially Asgardian so it must have been traumatic. That would be painful no matter who you were but for someone who especially valued aesthetic beauty-”

A crackling, puffing sound stops her rambling. It’s only when he moves to the windows, giving her a glimpse of his shaking shoulders silhouetted against the lighter black, that she realizes he’s laughing. “No one ever accused me of being beautiful. Before or after.”

In a career spent facing the shadows the rest of humanity prefers to avoid, that simple statement is one of the saddest things Jemma has ever heard. She must say as much because he waves her off.

“That whole thing on the Lighthouse—the clothes, the food, the whole persona—it was all for Kasius. People like him think you’re just the same, they assume anything you bring them is up to their own exacting tastes because yours are even narrower. It’s just business.”

Jemma finds herself drawing nearer, close enough to see the curve of a nearby planet through the window and, just cresting its edge, a sun. It’s a stunning sight, the likes of which she only hoped for in her wildest childhood fantasies. And yet her focus is on Dred.

“So who are you then?”

The answering silence stretches out long enough for the sun to emerge fully from behind the planet and the starship to tip, allowing her a vertigo-inducing view directly down onto a reddish continent dotted by the white flecks too sharply angled to be anything but civilization.

“I’m a simple man,” he says finally. “Simple tastes. A sunrise, a warm and willing woman, a bottle of wine. For me, it doesn’t get much better than that.” He turns away from the planet, his arm lifting briefly between them before falling back to his side. “We’ll be launching a raiding party soon. Keep to the medbay. It won’t be safe at the edges of the ship.”

The soft sound of his boots on the carpet fades away behind her. His warning tugs at her to follow, but she remains where she is, eyes on the planet and mind caught somewhere between here and the bridge.

 


	5. Chapter 5

_  
He knew that she was created to be protected, and that he was created to protect her.  
_ —Edgar Rice Burroughs _, Tarzan of the Apes_

 

There’s an almost steady cycle that the _Awahra_ goes through. Jemma boarded during one of the calm stages; easy sailing through endless space during which the crew are largely free to do as they will. And while she’s learned such interludes take up the majority of the crew’s time, they are necessarily broken by brief spurts of chaos in the form of raids.

She and Amala are quiet this morning, each feeling the tension that suffocates the medbay in anticipation of the first wounded. It will be hours yet—the shuttles haven’t even detached to carry out the raid—but they’re both keeping busy, disinfecting surfaces that have already been sufficiently cleaned, readying supplies that have already been prepped. As such, Flint’s loud arrival is both a shock and a welcome distraction.

“Guess what!” he yells, rushing in so quickly he has to catch himself against one of the beds. He doesn’t seem to mind though. He’s bouncing on his toes and his smile is so broad he’s in danger of spraining something.

“Hands,” Amala says sternly. Flint obediently lifts them high, backing away from the bed so she can disinfect it once more. “What’s got you so trizzed?” she asks.

Still bouncing, he says, “I’m going on the raid!”

“What?” Jemma asks. The scalpel she was straightening on its tray slips from her fingers.

“I’m _going_!”

Amala’s eyes dart from him to Jemma and back again. “I thought Frey said you needed more experience.”

“I do! That’s why I’m going today. We’re not just sending the shuttles, we’re docking with the station we’re going after. So if things go curvy I’ll be able to get back to the ship real fast.”

Jemma’s heart pounds, all that built-up tension flooding her system with adrenaline. Flint is a _child_ and he’s about to go into a firefight just to steal from some hard working people. He could be hurt or _killed_ and for what?

She could talk to Frey. Perhaps he can be convinced to wait a while longer. But that will do little good, as Flint will just be sent out on the next mission that is considered marginally more safe than the usual raid. Though she hates to admit it, perhaps it’s for the best Flint get this experience now so he can better prepare himself for the realities of this work.

All at once her worries and fears, still painfully present, are eclipsed by a familiar realization.

“That’s good,” Flint says, “right?” He’s looking to share his excitement and, if the waver in his voice is any indication, fishing for approval.

“It is,” Amala says, her enthusiasm just this side of forced.

“It’s great news,” Jemma says, dragging herself as best she can out of her thoughts.

Amala smiles at her, clearly relieved she managed to speak at all. “Be sure to stick close to Frey though. And if he tells you to scamper back to the _Awahra_ , you…?”

“Come back without question,” Flint says in the way of someone made to listen and repeat an order several times. “I know. I’ll see you guys later, I gotta get ready!” He runs off, his excitement renewed.

“You’d better not!” Amala yells after him.

Jemma can guess why. A typical raid might see no injuries if the men are able to cow their victims into behaving or might see the two of them working through the night to patch up the wounded if the target fights back. A raid on a space station, one that requires the ship to dock, will likely see heavy resistance. Anyone Jemma and Amala see for the next few hours is sure to be one of the injured.

“He’ll be fine,” Amala says softly. “Frey wouldn’t send him if he thought it would be too dangerous.”

“I know,” Jemma says and gets back to her busywork. Amala thinks she’s worried about Flint—which she _is—_ but more than that she’s feeling guilty.

She felt like this often while undercover in Hydra. Though the lab work was enjoyable in its familiarity and she could spend time laughing with her coworkers, she always had to remember that that was not her _real_ work and those were not her _real_ friends. Those sorts of realizations have been fewer and farther between on the _Awahra_ , which only makes them more painful when they do occur.

She’s grown comfortable in the ship’s routines, comfortable working in the medbay, comfortable with the crew. But it’s all just a stepping stone to her true objective: escaping the ship, finding her way back to Earth, reuniting with the others.

Or it’s meant to be. She’s been here weeks now and when is the last time she gave serious thought to leaving? She’s let herself get distracted by the tranquility and camaraderie and her own curiosity.

“I think-” she says, speaking before she knows what she’s going to say. She drags her thoughts into line, allowing the plan to come together on its own. “I think I’m going to head down to the docking ports. I’ll be able to treat any smaller injuries that come in and decide if anyone needs to be rushed up here and-”

“And keep an eye out for Flint?” Amala asks knowingly. Her tail flicks towards the door. “Fine. Go. But once we detach I’ll need you back here.”

“Of course.” Jemma smiles gratefully and grabs one of the spare bags of emergency medical supplies. She feels a pang of guilt, lying to Amala, but it’s nothing to how she feels about forgetting the team. She hurries down the corridor, aware they could arrive at their destination at any moment. She has one quick stop to make at her quarters and then she’ll be gone.

 

=====

 

There’s something to the groan of the ship as Jemma nears the starboard side that alerts her they’re already docked. Soon after she sees the space station, disturbingly pale through the windows when she’s grown so used to only stars. Then, as she nears the docking port, she hears the unmistakable sound of weapons fire.

“Jemma?” Clorik, a stone-skinned alien who Jemma often sees when she visits Flint in the training rooms, doesn’t pause in recalibrating his weapon. His hands continue the work while he looks her over in concern. “What are you doing down here, beautiful?”

“I thought there might be wounded,” she says, hefting her bag.

“And trouble,” he says, nodding to her side. Dred’s knife is heavy on her hip.

“Always be prepared.”

He grunts and moves down the dock. “Keep your head down, but you can take a look at T’Rel’s leg while we wait for the rest to get back.”

T’Rel is on her stomach on the floor, blaster balanced on the rim of the dock. She gives Jemma a brief smile over her shoulder and a shake of the injured leg—“’t’s nothin’ serious”—before turning her focus back to the job at hand.

She’s right. It is nothing serious. The most difficult part is cleaning up the blood. After that, a quick spray with a bio-organic healing agent is all it needs to staunch the bleeding and get the burnt skin on the way to repairing itself.

Likely both sentries expect Jemma to move back once her task is accomplished, but she only hunkers down against the wall behind Clorik. His bulk acts as a shield and from this vantage point she can better watch what’s happening outside.

There are more guards keeping watch deeper into the station on the next doorway. She worries what she’ll do about them—and about what lays beyond—but conveniently it’s only a few minutes before the first wounded are being carried back.

There are shouts of warning, cover fire laid down, and demands for more help to carry those who can’t walk on their own. The first to come is an Inhuman too injured for Jemma to do him any good at all and she orders him taken straight to Amala while already moving past T’Rel to inspect the next. This one isn’t in any danger—just a broken wing—but Jemma has no tools to treat him here. With the corridor beyond the _Awahra’s_ port so narrow and the wounded in so much pain, those trying to help them brush and shove against one another to make it through.

Two more minor injuries pass her by in the commotion, both she could easily help, but beyond them is Krelah, his neck frill so pale he could be a ghost. Even with two men supporting him, his eyes flutter and his gangly legs turn to jelly before Jemma’s eyes. The last sentries shout a warning to T’Rel and Clorik behind them before abandoning their post to help.

Guilt clawing at her ribs, Jemma follows, then makes a sharp turn down the first corridor she sees. It takes her out of sight and, in the chaos, no one notices her disappearance.

She takes off at a sprint, knowing time is of the essence. She has to hide before the _Awahra_ leaves. When the station crew inevitably finds her, she’ll tell them she hid when the attack began then use her medical knowledge to barter for passage back to Earth. Easy. Simple.

...Experience tells her it will be anything but.

First she has to put as much distance as possible between her and the _Awahra’s_ point of attack. With only a weak cover story to explain her presence on board, she doesn’t want to make it too obvious she came from an enemy vessel. She sets herself to getting well and truly lost in the station’s network of halls. Left, right, right, left, until even she can’t remember the way back again.

There’s a distinctly different feel to the architecture here. The metal walls are slicker, darker, and, oddly enough, thicker. She’d expect the outer walls to be the thickest to better protect against the nothingness of outer space. If the interior sections are more heavily fortified there must be a reason for it. Perhaps one that explains why the _Awahra’s_ taken an interest in this-

Blaster fire sparks across the paneling to Jemma’s right. She hits the opposite wall, instinct driving her away from the danger and through the next doorway. Bright lights dominate the farthest wall, but nearer is a computer station she would, under other circumstances, take cover behind. Unfortunately that’s not a possibility due to the masked man currently splitting his attention between typing away at the controls and aiming his blaster at her.

He barely— _barely—_ recognizes her in time, his head snapping around and his typing hand grabbing the gun at the same second his trigger finger twitches.

She shrieks and ducks away as the blaster fire goes wild, striking the wall above her head and sending sparks down around her.

“What the _fuck_?” Dred demands, his tone doing nothing at all for the shaking in her joints. Fury positively radiates off him and when he steps closer, her hand closes around the hilt of the knife still heavy on her hip. If he tries to stop her or hurt her, she will use it.

She needn’t have worried. Dred barely takes a step towards her before a third party enters. Jemma’s earlier attacker—by his uniform, she suspects he’s part of the station’s security force—freezes in the doorway, plainly not expecting the scene he’s just walked in on. Dred too stops in his tracks and for a moment they’re all still as stone, each adjusting to this unforeseen turn of events.

The security officer recovers first. If Jemma were to guess, she would have thought he’d take a shot at Dred while he’s distracted, but he wastes his chance, grabbing for her instead.

She stumbles back, fighting to unsheath the knife while turning against the wall. In her peripheral vision, Dred is a blur. She hears only an animal roar and then the sickening crunch of the officer’s bones losing the fight between acceleration and solid metal.

He drops like the proverbial sack, leaving Dred nothing to worry about except her. He looms over her, a shadow against the bright lights, phantom images swimming across his mask. It’s only when a post blocks her progress that she realizes it’s her, her frantic movements to get away reflected back at her.

Just like the officer, he reaches for her. But this time she doesn’t grab for the knife. She can’t. Some mix of fear and, strangely, shame steals her courage. He grabs her to him, one arm wrapping so tight around her middle she can barely breathe. His other arm shadows them both and she cringes beneath it, expecting a blow. It’s only when it doesn’t come, when she realizes he’s shaking against her, when the sound of blaster fire finally registers, that she realizes he’s sheltering her. The officer wasn’t as defeated as either of them thought and he’s managed to get a hand on his blaster.

“Let go,” she says once the reality of the situation catches up with her.

Obstinate man, his arm tightens. She twitches her hand inside his coat and imagines though she can’t see them, his eyes are widening comically. He certainly _feels_ shocked that she’s discovered the second gun (the blaster he fired earlier is across the room, out of reach because for some reason he thought smashing a man’s head in was a better strategy than using it) but she could hardly miss it when she’s pressed so tightly against him. Luckily his shock loosens his hold enough she can slide it free of its holster.

She pulls her neck back so as to better to see his mask. It gives away nothing save her own white terror but she can hear his every breath struggling out through the mechanism that filters his speech. “Let go,” she says again, pleading for them both. After a brief hesitation, his arm releases her to slam into the wall. She doesn’t allow herself to think about the strength it must have taken to keep his feet holding her like that or the strength he must possess to withstand the continuing onslaught. The armor he wears beneath his typically imposing coat protects him from the worst of the damage but he’s obviously feeling the impacts; flesh and blood will give out long before the blaster’s power core so she doesn’t have time to think, only to act.

Nestled into the corner, she has little room to maneuver and must make do looking over his shoulder while holding his blaster around his hip. She doesn’t know how many shots it takes before a lucky one neutralizes the threat, but when it’s over Dred’s head drops to her shoulder, his breaths coming so heavily she considers ordering him to take off the mask for his own safety.

She doesn’t though. She remains where she is, her right arm itching to lift, press the blaster to his chest and order him to let her go, while her left arm aches to hold him as he held her.

A voice crackles at her ear. Not Dred’s and too tinny for her to understand. It’s his comm and whatever he hears, it spurs him to action.

He straightens with all the controlled strength of a man in considerable pain. His hand finds hers, pulling her after him.

“No,” she says. “I’m not going back.” When she fails to pull free of him, she lifts the blaster.

He twists it from her without any effort, sending a pained spasm through her wrist. Like she wanted, he releases her, only to wrap his hand around her middle so he can half-carry her. “ _Come on_ ,” he says viciously.

She fights him. Whatever strange impulse held her back before, it’s gone now. She kicks and screams all the way back to the _Awahra_ , stopping only when he practically throws her into a stunned Clorik’s arms at the docking port. By then she’s too tired from her run and the fight and her own failure-fueled sadness to bother any longer.

She considers, for a brief moment, leaping through the closing doors and escaping back onto the station. But the officer might not be dead (she didn’t even check, didn’t once consider doing so, she might have killed the man and didn’t care) and, if he isn’t, he’ll no doubt lock her up and she’ll be in an even worse position than she will be here. So she allows Clorik to guide her on board with the last of the stragglers.

Though some are injured—Dred potentially seriously—they pause in the corridor. The station is already tilting in the windows. Seconds later, it recedes rapidly until it looks much smaller than the massive station Jemma got lost in.

“Anyone left?” Dred asks.

“All the units released,” Frey says, “just as planned.” Jemma didn’t even notice him there. She searches the hallway for some sign of Flint but finds none. Frey avoids her questioning stare and goes on with his report. “Escape pods took off once they figured we weren’t leaving. There are a few left. Anyone else is choosing to stay.”

Dred’s shoulders stiffen. “Bridge?” he waits a beat, no doubt for acknowledgment. “Sink it.”

Before Jemma can even process the order, the _Awahra_ opens fire on the station. While they watch, the structure cracks, oxygen ignites and blooms into open space, driving the two halves apart. Soon more cracks open, more rooms and corridors filled with life-giving air are set on fire. It must be impossible from this distance with all the debris emerging, but Jemma imagines she can see bodies.

She feels ill. They’ve never done this before in her time on the _Awahra_. They always took what they wanted and left, they didn’t stay to _decimate_ their target. She looks at Dred, at his dark shadow against the fire-filled sky, strong and oh so proud. She knew he was a pirate but she never knew he was a monster.

Just like before, she has no room to think. There’s only room for her anger and disgust and, yes, betrayal. She can’t believe she’s here again—trusting a man to protect her, to do what’s right even if his means might be on the morally grey side—only to discover he’s nothing but a murderer. And worse, he killed those people because of _her_. If he hadn’t discovered her, he wouldn’t have been driven to seek revenge.

She doesn’t make the decision to attack him—if she did, she would certainly use the knife at her hip or steal a blaster from any one of the surrounding men—but somehow, without conscious thought, she goes from cold horror to furiously pounding his chest and calling him every name she knows.

Dred barely reacts and not at all in a way that’s satisfying. Calmly, coolly, he catches her by the wrists and drags her through the ship. He doesn’t rise to her insults or, when fear sets in, answer her questions. He only keeps walking, steady and unyielding.

He’s a monster, she thinks again, this time more literally. When she falls behind she can see his back, see the coat ravaged by blaster fire, the dents and cracks in the armor. What is he that he could stand up to that and keep standing?

When he finally stops, it’s outside of her quarters. She doesn’t stop, though. There’s barely a heartbeat between the opening of the door and Dred tossing her inside. She falls onto the bed, rolling just in time to see the door close firmly between them. She doesn’t bother rising to check. It can only be locked.

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

 _If longing were a garden in tartarus, all the flowers would be burning._  
— Yves Olade, “Hylas, on Desire”

 

An unexpected benefit of the door no longer recognizing her genetic profile is that when her (many) failed attempts to get out are finally overridden by a valid code, there is an audible note of acceptance. She throws herself back over the edge of the dresser for a hard fall on the floor. She just barely manages to avoid cutting herself on the knife on the way down.

The door slides open with its familiar swish. Footsteps rush forward. Jemma spins, bringing the knife up between herself and Dred.

He freezes halfway to his knees, hands raised. Though she can’t see them, she can feel his eyes roving over every inch of her.

“Are you all right?” he asks finally.

She scoffs. The _mass murderer_ is concerned for her well-being. She’s touched.

Her wrist is still smarting from the way he jerked it earlier and she hasn’t done it any favors while she’s been locked up. It wavers, just enough that he can get inside her reach, twist the knife wide and send it skidding across the floor. Crouched low as she is, she can only throw herself back until hard metal stops her retreat. His hand—rough and warm, she’s never seen him without gloves before—cradles her cheek and he repeats his question.

“Are you hurt?”

She lifts her chin. “No more than the people on that station.”

She means it to wound him, and yet she’s surprised that it does. He flinches back, his hand falling away. He considers her again and this time she struggles not to squirm. It takes every ounce of her self-control to hold her eyes on his mask.

With visible effort, he pushes himself to his feet. His back must be hurting him after that beating he took earlier. The beating he took to save her.

She steels herself against the guilt and sympathy. He deserved it. And worse.

“Come on,” he orders. “On your feet.”

She does as he says. Slowly. There’s a brief moment in which she considers diving for the knife. But she doesn’t _know_ her life is in jeopardy. Dred must have had some reason for locking her up here rather than killing her outright, but if she kills him, she knows the rest of the crew well enough to know she won’t survive the day.

Besides, even injured, she suspects Dred would have little trouble fending her off.

Once she’s on her feet, he ushers her out of the room. Again, she resists the temptation to look back. He hasn’t seemed to notice anything amiss with the vent and drawing attention to it will only lose her her very small advantage.

She had hoped to escape through it, but prying the screws loose with the knife took longer than she thought and, when the sound of his admittance came, she had only enough time to slip her controller beneath the bottom edge. It isn’t much, but she’ll need all her senses if she’s to escape this place and she’d rather not make it easy for Dred to rob her of them.

He walks her through the halls, one hand at her back to guide her and prevent her running. Where she’d run to is a mystery. She’d had some vague hopes of stealing a shuttle while she was working on the vent, but with her minimal flight knowledge (she silently curses the Chitauri for the phobia that kept her out of the Bus’s cockpit) she can’t afford to make such a risky attempt when Dred is fully aware of it.

The few crewmen they pass along the way pointedly avoid looking at either of them. Jemma’s not sure whether that’s an indication of the fate that awaits her or simple discomfort brought on by word of her fight with Dred. Either way, it leaves an unsettled feeling in her gut that isn’t helped at all when they take a lift down to one of the lower levels.

This part of the ship isn’t one she’s familiar with. It’s largely storage and engineering. She wonders briefly if he’s going to put her to work here, chain her to some hot, stinking piece of equipment and leave her to rot. If he does, it had better not be anything crucial to systems’ function as she will immediately be sabotaging it.

Her fantasies die when a set of heavy doors open onto one of the cargo bays. Rows of cylindrical structures fill the space. Each stands over six feet tall and, standing close as they are, the shadows prevent her from making out what might be inside them.

“How are they?” Dred asks, leaving her at the doors to approach the computer station nearby.

The crewman standing there is some sort of bug-like creature, so short he has to stand on an overturned box. “One of the escape pods destroyed a pallet. Likely they realized what we were after and chose to destroy them rather than let us have them.”

The news hits Dred hard. His head falls and he uses a fist to brace himself against the console.

But the crewman goes on. “Six more individuals were lost on the way. One to faulty equipment, I expect it was gone before we arrived. The rest to cracks. Amala hasn’t been down yet to inspect the others.”

“Right,” Dred says, straightening. “She won’t be.” He nods to Jemma. “Get Jemma suited up with some protective gear in case there are more cracks. Any that are in trouble, send ’em straight to Amala.”

When he tries to make an exit, Jemma refuses to move out of the way. “If you think I’m going to help you inspect your ill-gotten gains after you viciously murdered those people-”

“ _I think_ ,” Dred cuts in coldly, “after the tantrum you threw, that you’ll be happy to help me save a few. Get suited up and start working, you’ve got five more bays to clear after this one.”

He moves around her, the edge of his coat brushing her leg as he passes. She watches him go, brain spinning to catch up.

“Erm, miss?” The crewman is at her side, hoisting what must be a heavy, vacuum-sealed suit over his head. “The captain is right. They should have been checked by now.”

“What should have been checked?” she asks, more to herself than to him. She takes the suit and steps up to the nearest tube. Its roof prevents any of the overhead lights from penetrating the interior but she can make out a pinkish fluid inside. While she tears into the plastic to extract a glove, she circles it, hoping to see a silhouette of what might be so valuable inside.

“Each pod has an interior light,” the crewman says. He’s dragged a medkit over to her and produces a tablet, much like those used in the medbay. “You can sync up to them with this but don’t turn the lights on for too long, most of them aren’t ready for regular exposure.”

The tablet lights up under her touch and a slowly growing pulse in the corner of the open window lets her know when the tablet is connected to the pod before her. An array of controls pop up and she searches for the one that might control the lights, her eyes skimming over the familiar alien words she’s come to learn in her time here.

When she finds it, a dull light snaps on, washing her in a pink glow. She lifts her head and very nearly stumbles back. Suspended in the liquid, curled tightly in on itself like a sleeping animal hiding from the sudden light, is what could easily be a human toddler.

 

=====

 

“They’re slaves,” Amala says. She’s bent over the first of the pods whose occupants Jemma deemed in danger and had sent up to her. This one is notable as the youngest of the three, the other two are adolescents whose pods are standing at the edge of the room. Jemma imagines, since they’ve been hooked up to ports on the wall and one of the pods has turned a deep purple color, they must be receiving some sort of treatment. The liquid in this one has turned a worrisome brown since Jemma last saw it, which is likely why Amala’s draining some of it away.

Jemma taps her fingers furtively against the nearest bed. Slavery matches with the theories she came up with while she was examining the more than two hundred people currently housed in the _Awahra’s_ cargo bays.

“That station you visited-” Jemma does not miss the judgmental note in Amala’s voice- “was a factory. They’re grown like cattle and chipped and sold off to work the rest of their short lives away.”

“Chipped?” Jemma echoes.

“Nanites.” Amala’s terse expression softens. “Most have their own methods for marking their slaves, as you know, but in the case of the Naulian family, they inject all their slaves with nanites prior to sale.”

That would explain the extra box that popped up on her readings when she examined the most developed of them. She didn’t recognize the word attached to it, but it must have been an indicator that the nanites are transmitting.

“It’s a way of keeping track of them on the off chance they think to escape—not that most do, they don’t know enough to know there’s anywhere to escape to—and of punishing them if they get out of hand.”

Jemma eyes the nearest of the adolescents, thinking of the wrongness she felt for days after Kasius enslaved her. Aside from the deafness, her ear just felt _wrong_. Does this boy sense the wrongness that’s invaded his own body even while he sleeps?

“We’ll flush them all,” Amala says gently. “The nanites are easy to remove at this stage.”

That’s a relief. She’s gotten used to the implant wrapped around her own brain, but that doesn’t mean she wants anyone else to have to do the same.

“Speaking of—here—I have to check on his progress.”

Jemma finds her arms suddenly full of a very gooey, very squirmy baby. “What? What do I-?”

“Clean her up,” Amala says over the beginnings of a cry.

The infant learns quickly how to use her voice and her limbs. She kicks and twists on the bench Jemma lays her on to towel her off. No amount of cooing or cleaning soothes her and, as the sharp cries exacerbate the weight of the long and eventful day, Jemma finds herself wishing she hadn’t left her controller hidden in her quarters.

“Hold her,” Amala suggests. She’s finished with the first of the pods and is examining the second once more. “She needs skin-contact.”

As it’s just the three of them and two sleeping patients, Jemma swiftly unbuttons her blouse and holds the infant to her chest. If the extra skin helps at all, Jemma can’t tell. The baby squirms more than ever, her cries close enough now that Jemma can definitely feel the beginnings of a headache settling in.

Amala comes over, resting her hands flat against the baby’s back. “She’s not used to it, is the trouble. It’s like the light. They all cringe away but they need it to survive.”

As if she understands Amala’s words and has suddenly remembered, the baby buries her face in Jemma’s neck to hide.

“There we are,” Amala says, voice soft and calm. “She’s learning.” And sure enough, the baby’s struggling slows and her cries fade to a wet whimpering and her hands curl in Jemma’s collar and breast.

“The rest will be dealt with at the abbey, so don’t worry you’ll have to do this a hundred more times, but this little one needed to come out right away.” She tickles one of the chubby cheeks with the tip of her tail before moving away.

The little body presses even closer to Jemma, ribs and hips digging into her chest. She tucks her chin over the bald head. “Abbey?” she asks.

“The holy order of Yaev. They’ll bring the rest out of stasis and care for them, teach them, give them names and the chance at real lives lived as they will choose.”

“You’ve done this before.”

Amala’s smile is sympathetic. “We have. Many times.”

Jemma considers this as she paces to keep the baby calm. She struggled to hold to her anger while she examined the pods, the familiar work and the reality of the situation combining to melt her righteous fury to a cold fear. Not just fear that she was right and those poor people growing in the pods were destined for lives of servitude, but that she was wrong.

No matter what they were guilty of, the people on that station were still _people_ , just as much as the child in Jemma’s arms. But even if she were to take the unenviable position that their crimes did not make them worthy of death (and perhaps they didn’t, she can’t ignore the possibility they too were slaves, grown just like these and set to work making more while the Naulian family Amara mentioned lives in security far away), the station still needed to be destroyed, the process stopped.

A soft sight across her skin draws her attention downward. She can’t tell from this angle, but it appears the baby’s eyes have shut or are near to it.

“Be glad you’re leaving,” Jemma whispers. “Living on a pirate ship is complicated.”

When enough time has passed she’s sure the baby is sleeping, she attempts to lay her down, only to get a whack from Amala’s tail. Apparently a half hour of skin contact after a lifetime in a sterile tube isn’t enough. She hoists herself awkwardly onto one of the beds and lays the both herself and the baby down together, Amala certainly can’t argue with _that_.

“What about Flint?” Jemma asks. She rests her hands over the baby’s back and it helps to settle her down again.

“He’s fine,” Amala says. For a moment that seems to be all she’ll say, but when she speaks again there’s a gentle tone to her voice Jemma’s been missing. “He turned his ankle. He was so eager, he tripped on his way back. He was worried about you though.”

She closes her eyes. That’s one of the problems with her escape plan failing: now she has to face the concern she’d thought to leave behind.

It feels she’s been asleep only seconds when the sound of a door sliding open wakes her. She sits up, her earlier anxiety rushing back, and discovers Dred standing in the medbay’s doorway.

“I can come back,” he says.

“Or,” Amala says, “you can wait in your great cabin instead of running all over the ship with an injured back.”

There’s a beat of silence during which Jemma realizes her shirt is still open. The baby is plenty big enough to keep her covered, but she still struggles to get the open sides of her blouse arranged more modestly.

“I’ll see you soon then,” Dred says and the door swishes shut a moment later.

Almost immediately Amala appears before Jemma, wearing a look that would make May jealous. “I’ve already treated his injuries, but knowing him he’ll need that shoulder wound sealed again and his back will be hurting him.”

Jemma winces. He might not be in any pain at all if it weren’t for her.

Amala holds out her arms and Jemma’s heart plummets through the floor. Amala’s not telling her about Dred’s condition as an explanation for why she’ll be gone so long, she’s preparing her. Reluctantly, she hands the baby over. She starts to fuss, her little face screwing up in annoyance at the change.

“The salve is in my desk, bottom drawer. And be sure you’re gentle massaging it in; his back’s taken enough punishment today.”

Jemma grabs the salve and a medkit just in case Amala’s right and whatever patch work she did earlier has been undone. By the time she makes it out the door, the baby is crying in earnest. Jemma knows how she feels.

 

=====

 

Despite her earlier imprisonment, she has no trouble reaching the bridge. Frey is there, manning the helm, and nods Jemma to a door on the right.

She hurries inside, eager to escape the stares of the bridge crew, only to have her feet skid to a stop beneath her once she’s through the door. Dred’s sitting backwards in the chair on the far side of the desk, his face to the wide windows and a view of the stars, his bare back to her. His mask is off, resting on the desk like a castoff eggshell.

All that embarrassment and attraction she felt last time is gone, replaced by crushing guilt. Dred’s back is mottled, the angry scars she saw before barely visible amidst all the bruising.

“Hurry up,” he says. Then, with his head slumping forward, “It hurts.”

Jemma rushes across the room. There’s a nasty burn on his shoulder, cutting across the blue scars that reach up his back. It looks like whatever armor protected him from the worst of the blaster-fire buckled here, allowing some of it to reach him. Sure enough, the liquid bandage already in place has broken.

She disinfects the area before replacing it and then begins gingerly rubbing the salve in elsewhere, giving it time to dry. Dred moans.

“Keep going,” he says when she lifts her hand away. “It helps.”

She bites her lip. She wasn’t so much fearful she’d hurt him as she was frightened by her own reaction. Now it feels like last time. The heat comes rushing back, a million times worse with her hands on him and that sound he made still fresh in her mind.

She tries to think of other things. The chill when she ran across the open snow fields outside that arctic Hydra base. That one professor who always had gunk at the corner of his eye. The taste of that tentacled creature on Maveth. None of it works.

She looks to the stars. Just a few short weeks ago she was staring out at the sky with him, asking him what kind of man he was, trying to piece him together. Simple, that’s how he described himself. She thinks he’s anything but.

Dred stiffens under her hands. “Amala?”

She twists to grab more salve. “No,” she says and it must hurt him the way he flinches. “I’m sorry.” She moves down his back, to the smooth red that marks the scar at its center. “For what I said, too. I didn’t understand.”

“I had just murdered more than two dozen people. It seemed warranted.”

Though he can’t see her, she shakes her head. “You had good reason.”

He chuckles. “Yeah. I always do have that.”

He’s still tense and she’d love to chide him for it but, as she’s the cause, she doubts that would help. Instead she attempts to get him talking. “What happened? This wound…”

“Wow. Never had someone forget my daring deeds so quickly.”

She smacks him. Not his back, that’s suffered enough today, but the back of his head. Just a gentle tap that can’t do any real harm. He sits frozen for long seconds before a choked “ _what_ ” escapes him.

She stifles a laugh and smooths down the cowlick she’s inadvertently given him, no easy task when he’s shaking with what she imagines is laughter of his own.

“You know very well what I meant,” she says when she’s done (and pointedly ignores the suspiciously Daisy-sounding voice that urges her to run her hands through his hair in earnest). She rests her fingers over the scar. “Tell me.”

Slowly, as if he has to concentrate on each muscle one-by-one, he relaxes beneath her touch well enough she feels safe to resume massaging in the salve.

“I died,” he says finally and she can’t say that opening wasn’t worth the wait. “On some barren world light years from here. Taryan, that’s Kasius’ father, found me. He thought I was an Inhuman so he- well, he-”

“He brought you back to life using Kree blood,” she says, sliding her hand up his spine. “I’ve seen it done before.”

“Unfortunately I’m not an Inhuman. But I’m also, it turns out, not entirely human. They didn’t figure on the Asgardian DNA—truth is I wouldn’t have either, seeing as I didn’t know—and it fucked it all up. Hence-” He tips his head to the side pointing to where she knows the scars climb his neck.

“You’re human?” she asks.

He grunts. “Mostly, like I said.” He waves his same hand—his left, she notes now, even though it must be awkward; his right must be hurting him—to his back. “Don’t worry too much. One of the benefits of their experiments activating my Asgardian DNA: these’ll heal in a couple days.”

That’s not really what she was thinking of.

Her fingers close over his shoulder. She steps forward, moving to her knees so she’s more on his level. She expects him to pull away, to grab for the mask the way he did before. She hopes he doesn’t, as it would make what she plans to do very awkward.

He turns his head as she moves, hiding all but his scars from her. “Jemma,” he breathes and her heart clenches so painfully she’d think it stopped if she couldn’t feel it still. She reaches for his face, feels the stubble of his long day.

She opens her mouth to speak, but the sound that fills the room’s quiet is the door sliding open.

Dred spins away from her, sending the chair knocking into the wall beneath the windows. “Frey, what did I tell you-” His hand closes over her shoulder, holding her in place. He needn’t have bothered. The sight of a Kree filling the doorway freezes her quite effectively in place.

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

 _Although I may not be yours, I can never be another’s._  
— Mary Shelley, from a letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

“Faulnak,” Dred says, his hand still tight on Jemma’s shoulder. “This is a surprise.”

“He just dropped out of a jump on us.” Frey says from behind the Kree. “Invited himself on board before we could even-”

Dred lifts his free hand. “It’s all right. Faulnak is always welcome on the _Awahra_. Set a course for his ship,” he adds, causing Frey to all but flinch. “I assume that whatever request you’ve come to make will require us to fly with you at least some distance?”

“Yes,” Faulnak says, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll agree to it.” He drops into one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk. He cranes his neck in Frey’s direction. “My man will give you the coordinates.”

Frey doesn’t seem too happy and he spends another moment looking Faulnak over, no doubt searching for whatever weakness his ability allows him to see, before his eyes move to Jemma. She gives him a reassuring nod—she trusts Dred. It’s odd to think after she so recently spent hours considering him worse than Grant Ward, but she was wrong. About everything. And if she’s right about him now… Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, she misjudged him before and if he doesn’t order Frey to remove her, she trusts he has a reason.

Faulnak smiles at Frey’s departure. “My brother would kill to have such loyalty from his Inhumans.”

“He does.” Dred reaches for his mask.

“There’s no need.” Faulnak waves a careless hand. “I am not my brother—or my father.”

“And yet you stare,” Dred says, the words garbled by the mask as he fits it in place.

Faulnak allows the assessment with a nod which, as it brings his attention to her, has Jemma cringing back behind Dred’s leg. “Speaking of my brother. I’ve never known you to care for his purely human toys—or is it something you picked up on your latest raid?”

If it weren’t for the tension she can feel in Dred, Jemma would snap back at him that she is no one’s _toy_. But Dred is frightened. Because of her presence? Or because Faulnak knows about the raid?

Dred laughs. It’s a horrible sound filtered through the mask and Jemma can’t help pulling away. Convenient, as he follows it up by dropping carelessly (both of decorum and his back, which really must be hurting from a fall even that short) into his own chair. “No, I bought her for her medical skills,” he says. His hand moves idly through her hair, the motion forcing her to face him. “But she has proven to have other uses.”

“I’d imagine so.”

It’s a good thing she isn’t looking at Faulnak because if he could see her expression it would immediately prove Dred a liar. But he must be lying for a reason and she won’t expose him, not to a Kree who’s invaded the ship. To better sell it, she rests her head on his thigh. He’s surprised by the move, but recovers quickly.

“So, what does the Kasius family require of my humble vessel?” Dred asks.

“Nothing. This is my request.”

Dred opens the arm not stroking Jemma’s head, a gesture to indicate that it makes no difference and an invitation to elaborate.

“My brother has acquired a rather singular Inhuman. The Destroyer.”

Dred scoffs. “That’s a little over the top, don’t you-” His hand stills on her hair. There’s a quaver in his muscles. “ _The_ Destroyer?” he asks.

“The very same,” Faulnak says, so pleased that Jemma can hear the smile in his voice. “My brother is planning to auction her off and Father wants her, of course. But I have my own plans for her—and I want you with me.”

“You know the debt I owe your family can never be repaid-”

The chair Faulnak sits in scrapes against the floor. “This isn’t about debts, _d’lesh_.” The alien word has Dred’s hand growing heavy on Jemma’s head. “This is about blood. While my brother sits in his crumbling castle, waiting for opportunity to find him, you _take it_. You think no one has noticed there are suspiciously few bodies in the wreckage of the Naulian holdings you attack?”

Jemma wraps her hand around Dred’s leg, rubbing what she hopes will be reassuring pressure along his calf.

Faulnak’s voice comes from nearer than before and has dropped low. “I know you are building an army. And in a matter of days I will have the Destroyer in my grasp, an Inhuman capable of destroying entire _worlds_.”

“What do you need with an army when you have that kind of power?”

“You sound like my brother,” Faulnak says dismissively. “Father ordered the Destroyer brought to him, but he did not say when. I propose we take the long way home. My Destroyer and your army, together decimating the family’s enemies along the way. We will be received as heroes and honored sons.”

Dred’s only movement as he considers the offer is his fingers in Jemma’s hair. She wonders what he’s thinking. Likely that he can’t accept because there’s no army. How will Faulnak react when he learns Dred has been _freeing_ slaves? If he’s anything like his brother, not well.

“And Kasius?” Dred asks.

“He can remain king of his little castle. It’s more than he deserves.”

Dred nods slowly. “Then I suppose all that’s left is for me to accept your offer.”

“Excellent!” His chair creaks, relieved of its burden. “Then I’ll let you get back to your afternoon’s enjoyments.”

Jemma barely feels the insult of the implication. They’re going back. To Earth.

Dred is up as soon as the door closes, pacing the floor and leaving her with her spinning thoughts. Daisy is the Destroyer, she’s nearly positive. Unless their captors also sent some other Inhuman with the potential ability to break a planet apart to the future, the odds are slim that the Destroyer would be long-lived enough to still be around _and_ to have remained hidden until a few short months after the team arrived in the future.

Not that she believes Daisy actually destroyed the Earth. She doesn’t have that much power for one and more important than that, she’s _here_. Unless she broke the planet apart between that diner and the monolith, she can’t have done it because she wasn’t there to do it.

Unless she travels back again.

Jemma sighs. She’s slightly regretful of all the hours she spent watching Doctor Who; time travel is the _worst_.

A chime sounds from the door and Dred taps a button on his desk to open it.

Frey rushes in, eyes darting from Dred across the room to Jemma still on the floor and back again. “The Destroyer? Truly?”

“You were listening,” Dred says.

Frey gives a wholly unapologetic shrug. “You’re not really going to let those monsters have her?”

“They already have her.” Dred sounds tired. “With very few exceptions, every human in the galaxy belongs to the Kasius family.”

Frey opens his mouth to speak but Dred cuts him off.

“Just do what he says for now.”

Frey’s obviously unhappy at being dismissed again, but he heads out, presumably to do as ordered.

Jemma hesitates. Dred’s probably forgotten her and if she wants to learn more about him and the plan moving forward, she should let that continue. But she has her own plans and she’d rather make the case for them before he cements his own.

“We’re going to Earth?” she asks, climbing to her feet.

As she thought, Dred jerks in surprise. He recovers quickly though, and she imagines those stiff shoulders are suspicious. “You know you can’t go back. Unless you _want_ to be Kasius’ slave again?”

“No,” she says, crossing the room to rest a preventative hand on his chest. He’s still shirtless, a fact that occurs to her belatedly. Though not as impressive as the remains of the GH-325 scarring his back, his chest is likewise scarred from a life of struggle. Most are recent—the discoloration of a blaster burn, the slash to his side that Amala told her about on her first day on board—but some are old enough to be nearly faded to nothing. That could just be his Asgardian DNA healing him faster than any normal human, but as SHIELD had no records of any such thing and surely he’s not the only part-Asgardian to ever walk the Earth, she’s more inclined to think it’s a product of simple time. As they say, it heals all wounds. The thought makes her smile briefly before she remembers why she’s in this position at all.

“I wanted to get back to my team,” she says, “not Kasius.”

“Your team?” he echoes.

“My friends. I was with them when Kasius … took notice of me. They’d be helpful.”

Dred stares, silent and still, barely even breathing.

“On the _Awahra,_ ” she clarifies.

He steps back and her hand falls. “You want me to steal your friends from the Lighthouse?”

“Kasius won’t miss them.”

He rolls his eyes so expressively she can tell despite the mask.

“It’s not like you aren’t already planning on stealing from him.” She rolls her own eyes at his obvious surprise. “Earth isn’t a desirable assignment and Kasius is clearly hoping to, at the very least, sell the Destroyer for his own benefit. But if all Inhumans belong to the family, Faulnak doesn’t need to win her at auction, he can just take her. And you’re going to help him.”

“Actually,” Dred says after a slight hesitation, “I’ll be there so Faulnak can rub it in Kasius’ face I'm on his side. He probably does want the army he thinks I’ve got, but he could just as easily have come to me after he had the Destroyer.”

“So whose side are you on?” Jemma asks. “Really?”

He holds her stare for long seconds. “Mine.”

It’s not what she wanted to hear, but she can still work with it. “So help me save my friends. They can help you get out of trouble with Faulnak, I’m sure of it.”

He laughs through the mask. “Oh, really? And how will a couple of humans with no powers and no political clout help me with an alien warlord?”

“I- I don’t know.” Maybe Elena could stab him really really fast or something? “But Coulson always has a plan and he’s beaten worse than Faulnak.”

Dred rests his hands on his desk. With his back to her, she’s struck by guilt, worse now than ever. He saved her on that station— _twice_. Once from the guard and once from the explosion. And that was hardly the first time. She owes him her life several times over and now, when he’s in the middle of a crisis she has no doubt could cost him his own life, she’s asking him to save her friends too. But she can’t take it back, she won’t.

“You’d have to come,” he says finally. “To identify them. Are you sure you’re prepared for that?”

Seeing Kasius and Sinara again. Seeing the slaves who weren’t lucky enough to escape. She can’t say she’s looking forward to it but…

“I’ll have to be,” she says.

“And if we can’t find them? Kasius will be watching, I can’t promise I’ll be able to get you to the upper levels and, even if I do, you won’t have much time to search.”

“You might be surprised.” As this entire auction is centered around Daisy, Jemma’s certain the others will be lingering nearby, looking for their moment to free her.

Dred looms over her suddenly, so close her breath catches. “Faulnak already has a very definite impression of you. You’ll have to keep playing the part, pretending we’re…”

“Doing what I thought you bought me for?” she asks.

He nods jerkily. “You sure you can stomach that?”

She laughs. “Will-” She stops. He’s gone stiff against her—and not in the good way. She smiles gently. “Will you stop worrying? I’m not a natural liar, but I am very practiced at selective truths. I can handle it.”

She watches his Adam’s apple bob. “It’s my job,” he says slowly. “The worrying. I am the captain. All these people are under my protection and you want me to put them at risk when they’re already in danger.”

She is doing that. She thinks of Amala and Flint and Frey and all the other friends she’s made here, all of whose lives are in danger thanks to Faulnak and his ridiculous plans.

For the _team_ though. How can she not take this chance, perhaps the last she’ll ever have?

“I’m trusting you too,” she points out. “If you can’t figure out a way out of the corner Faulnak’s got you in, my people will be worse off than before.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“I’m just saying this goes both ways. And it’s not as though you won’t be getting anything out of this. I didn’t say anything while Faulnak was here, for all he knows the implant is still active.”

“You want to be my spy in plain sight.”

She nods proudly. “Kasius thinks so little of humans, he’ll never see it coming.”

He chuckles and, this close, she can hear the real sound as well as the artificial one filtered through the mask. “Is there anything you haven’t thought of?”

“Clothes,” she says, the thought occurring to her all at once.

“What?” Dred sways back, the better to take in the clothes she’s already wearing.

“You said it yourself, you have an image to maintain with the Kree.” She gestures to the rumpled clothes she’s been wearing since hours before she even thought of escaping. “Your personal slave can’t wear _this_. How long before we get to Earth?”

“Once we get to Faulnak’s ship?” He hums. “Maybe a day.”

“And I haven’t slept,” she says. She’ll definitely need to be rested if she’s going undercover. “Is he still on the bridge?”

Dred leans over his desk and a holo of the bridge pops up on its surface. “Nope. Probably went back to his shuttle.”

“Then I’d better hurry.”

She’s at the door before his laughter catches her. “I never agreed,” he says.

She gives him her most charming smile. No words. Just a tip of her head and a grin that she knows will-

“Fine,” he sighs. “You win.” As if it was ever in doubt.

 

=====

 

She doesn’t get to sleep, not on the _Awahra_ anyway. Though Dred will be bringing his own shuttles through the maze of rubble that remains of the Earth, Faulnak insists he spend the majority of the journey in the comforts of the Kree vessel, leaving Jemma barely enough time to find an outfit and shower before she has to play her part.

Luckily she doesn’t have to play it for long, as Dred insists he’s still not rested after the raid on the station and Faulnak, whether he believes rest is truly what he’s after or not, readily points them towards Dred’s guest quarters.

“Bed,” Jemma orders the moment they’re alone.

“Someone’s eager,” Dred chuckles even as he backs towards the bed. From his coat he pulls the controller for her implant. She gave it to him when they met at the airlock.

(“Just in case,” she said.

“I’m not gonna use this on you,” he said, comfortingly fierce.

“I know. But if they find out you don’t have it, they’ll wonder why.” She pressed it into his hands. “I trust you.”)

He puts the controller pointedly on the nightstand. Were he anyone else she would think it’s a threat, but she knows coming from him it’s only a reminder. They’re on Faulnak’s ship now and they have to play the roles they’ve taken on, even in apparent privacy.

The long skirt Mzz gave her has a slit all the way up the side which allows her plenty of mobility to straddle Dred’s lap, the better to keep him in bed. “I’m your doctor too,” she reminds him. “You need rest.”

“And this is helping with that?”

His gloved hand is on her lower back, warm on the stretch of skin her sweater leaves uncovered. He rolls her beneath him. The final piece of her costume is a thick choker covered in jewels, perfect for a pirate’s slave. It prevents her lifting her head without digging the hard edges into her neck and jaw. Prone as she is, she feels more exposed than ever.

A pleasant shiver runs through her as his hand walks along her bare shoulder. She almost thinks (hopes?) he might take full advantage of the situation, until his fingers reach the choker. His hand lays flat over her collarbone.

“We had plenty of fun earlier,” he says. “Sleep. I want you well rested so that Kasius turns orange with jealousy and regrets not charging double for you.”

She catches hold of his coat, the intricate embroidery wrinkling under her fingers. “Stay with me.”

She doesn’t kid herself he really gives in. The awkward angle they’re at and her pull stalling what would’ve been a difficult movement for him all come together to have him rolling onto his back with an _oof_.

“I intended to,” he says.

She curls into his side and feels him tense, feels him slowly relax. Whether he sleeps or not, she can’t tell. She should certainly sleep herself—and she will, just … not yet. Even masked behind this fearsome Dred persona with all its trappings, she can’t help but take this opportunity to study him. He’s fearsome and brutal, all that is true. But he’s also kind and caring and has genuine affection for his crew. He’s a good man.

And he’s in a terrible position now, one her complete honesty won't help in the least. So she’ll wait until it’s over. When the team is safe and Faulnak’s gone, then they can talk. She’ll tell him then about the time travel and all that came before it. And he can tell her everything that he’s been through since Maveth.

 


	8. Chapter 8

_  
Now here you show up with the force of a wave  
And so I'm setting my sail, I’m headed for the empire state.  
Hey hey Lord, I don’t want to lose this one, she make me feel whole._  
 _You know I am- I am nothing without love._  
—"Nothing Without Love" by Nate Ruess

 

 

Jemma’s second arrival at the Lighthouse is just as stressful as her first. She clings to Dred’s right arm—a simple way of keeping in character but also a means of reassuring herself she’s not alone this time—as they follow respectfully behind Faulnak.

“Brother.” Kasius’ voice reaches them before Jemma can see him. When they step fully out of the transport and Dred takes a position slightly behind and to Faulnak’s left, Kasius’ eyes snap to them and widen. “And – Dred. I wasn’t aware you’d be coming.”

“Dred’s been so busy pursuing Father’s interests, can you believe he hadn’t even heard about your discovery until I told him? He was most eager to come see the Destroyer for himself.”

“She did destroy my planet,” Dred says. “Wouldn’t you be eager to meet her?”

Faulnak turns and around them the crewmen he brought along stiffen. “Of course,” he says warily. “But you know, _d’lesh_ , that such a prize—if this is indeed the Destroyer Kasius has found—is too valuable to be wasted on simple vengeance.”

Jemma focuses on her hands and on preventing her knuckles from going white even though she wants to dig her nails into Dred’s arm. If she’s right and the Inhuman Kasius is auctioning off _is_ Daisy, Dred coming all this way with the intent to kill her will be a terrible wrench in her plans.

Dred laughs. Loud and eerie through the mask. “I was planning on thanking her. If she hadn’t done the job, I imagine Taryan would have given it to me.” He steps forward to give Kasius a slap on the shoulder. “So much _work_ , managing one little world. I don’t know how you do it.”

Kasius’ jaw tightens as Faulnak’s smile sharpens. Dred wasn’t wrong when he said he had been invited along as part of a power play between the brothers.

“Where is she?” Faulnak asks.

“With the rest of the Inhumans,” Kasius says. “You’ll see her tonight, at the exhibition.”

“Exhibition?”

Kasius opens his arms. “Well, before I received your message, my guests had already arrived. They’re all so disappointed they won’t be given the chance to purchase her, I must give them something to make their time worthwhile. A demonstration of the power we now wield seemed appropriate.”

Faulnak scoffs. “The power the House of Kasius wields, you mean.”

“As I said.”

Jemma stiffens against Dred. She knows that particular set to Kasius’ shoulders means a tantrum is forthcoming. He turns that pleasantly vicious smile on Dred.

“It will be a fight to the death. I’d intended on an exhibition of skill against various Inhumans but one of my guests—Boshtok the Marauder, I believe you know him?”

“By reputation,” Dred says. “Not personally. It’ll be nice to put a face to the name. From what I hear he’s more of a hide-in-a-hole type than the kind to be at one of these things.”

“I couldn’t say,” Kasius says, obviously annoyed his attempt at riling Dred up failed. “But he _is_ here and he made the ingenious suggestion that the Destroyer fight to the death. It seemed appropriate.”

Jemma hides her outrage by resting her head on Dred’s shoulder. If the Destroyer is Daisy, she plans on giving this Boshtok a piece of her mind for putting her in that kind of danger.

Kasius claps his hands. “You must be tired from your journey. If you’d like to see your rooms-”

“Not at all. You may have forgotten, but a battle cruiser has quite comfortable accommodations.” Apparently Faulnak isn’t as afraid of one of his brother’s mood swings as his slaves learned to be. “I had hoped to simply collect the Destroyer and leave, but a test of her skills is a good idea.” Faulnak looks to Dred. “Most humans aren’t as long-lived as you, are they?”

“Nope,” Dred says. “I’d be a wrinkled old man if I were anyone else.”

“You’d be dead if you were anyone else. But the Destroyer can’t be much younger.” He nods to himself. “It will be a good idea to test her first.”

“Exactly,” Kasius says, sounding relieved to have his plan agreed with, though Jemma doubts he thought of such a reason. He motions for them to follow but before he can say anything-

“I’d like to see her. Inspect the merchandise.”

“Of course. Ava?”

Jemma is ashamed to say she didn’t notice one of Kasius’ human slaves hiding behind the hulking line of Kree guards. She recognizes the girl as someone she encountered often in her time in Kasius’ service and is relieved to see she’s still alive.

“See to it my brother and Captain Dred’s things are transferred to private quarters – in my private wing, not the guest section.”

Ava bends in a deferential bow and slips silently past them to board the shuttle.

“We won’t be staying long,” Faulnak cautions, but doesn’t stop her.

“Would you rather Jemma handle your things personally, Dred?” Kasius asks.

“Oh no.” He lifts Jemma’s chin, inviting her to look at him. She gives him what she hopes is a suitably adoring smile. “I bought Jemma for her medical skills and experience with Inhumans. She’s coming to meet the Destroyer. But one of your men could grab her med kit from the shuttle.”

“Of course,” Kasius says tightly and, after gesturing curtly for one of the guards to do just that, leads the way.

Faulnak falls into step beside Dred. “And here I thought you brought her to stave off boredom.”

Dred’s fist tightens beneath Jemma’s hand. “I didn’t say it was the only reason.”

Faulnak laughs.

Jemma tries to stay focused. She has two missions here. The first: to find the others and identify them to Dred. The second, which is necessary to the success of the first: to keep up appearances for Dred’s sake. Despite what she said aboard the _Awahra_ , pretending to be his adoring sex slave while surrounded by leering Kree is much harder than she thought it would be.

It would be much harder still if she didn’t have him though. Being able to lean on him allows her to keep at least somewhat aware of what he’s thinking. The stiffness of his grip, the increase in his heart rate. If he were anyone else, she might be afraid of reading too much into such minor indicators, but he isn’t a stranger or even just the pirate captain she’s come to know over long weeks. He’s Will, who was once the only other person in her whole world. She _knows_ him.

So she rubs warmth into his wrist while they traverse hallways made unfamiliar now that the implant’s been turned off and her vision restored. It’s her only means of letting him know that she’s fine, the innuendos and lewd looks don’t affect her. That they _do_ isn’t something he can do anything about, so there’s no point in letting him think there’s cause to tone it down.

The act turns out to be even more useful when they arrive at their destination. The Destroyer is, as Jemma suspected, Daisy, and she’s none too happy to be visited by the Kree.

“I’d offer you something to eat, if I had anything. And if I didn’t hate you. Which I do. Lots. Who’re your friends?” The biting statement ends in a choked hiss when Daisy recognizes Jemma. Horror flickers across her face, replaced quickly by renewed anger when her quick once-over finds the choker and Dred’s hand resting oh so casually on the stretch of skin between Jemma’s top and skirt. After all Daisy’s sure to have seen since arriving in this time period, it can’t be too big a jump to reach exactly the wrong conclusion Jemma and Dred are trying to convey.

She really should have considered how the team would react to seeing her in this state _before_ she put this plan into motion. But she’d thought she’d find them on the upper levels, where she’d be able to _explain_. Oh well, nothing for it now.

She turns into Dred’s embrace, resting a hand on his chest and giving him the quick two-tap signal they agreed on to indicate she’s seen one of her friends. His mask again turns in her direction and she can _feel_ his exasperation. Obviously this, discovering that one of the people he agreed to try and save is the one Inhuman on the station everyone will have eyes on, is not in line with any of his plans.

“As you can see,” Kasius says, “she’s in good spirits.”

Dred nudges Jemma forward, only to pull her back almost as soon as she’s left his embrace. “I assume she knows not to attack unless she’s been given the order?”

“She won’t hurt your precious slave.” (Jemma hopes she’s the only one who sees Daisy’s flinch at the word.) “And if she does, I’ll replace her.”

Dred makes a sound which, when filtered through the mask, is very much like a growl, but releases Jemma. She begins by making a cursory visual examination. She can’t see much, not without ordering Daisy to strip (and there is no way she’s doing that with all these Kree watching), but it doesn’t appear she’s been harmed.

She holds out her hand for her kit and, after a brief hesitation and a few raised eyebrows—Jemma may be acting the part of a meek and obedient slave here, but she’s _Dred’s_ slave, not anyone else’s—the guard holding her med kit hands it over. Just as she’d feared, a scan reveals the flesh around the implant has definitely healed more substantially than Flint’s had when he was brought aboard the _Awahra_. Jemma can only hope that Amala will still be able to remove it.

And, while she’s thinking of it, she has to wonder what Daisy’s been through in that time. Did Kasius have her while he had Jemma? Were they that close to one another with no idea?

A cold fist grips Jemma’s gut. Was Daisy found out _because of_  her? After so long without word of her, was she coming to her rescue only to be captured herself?

Jemma looks to Dred and taps her ear. He obligingly pulls out the controller and pretends to turn off the implant. Jemma does her part, rolling her neck and blinking her eyes rapidly as though her senses have just been inundated with new information.

Daisy does her part too, though she doesn’t know it. “Seriously?” she demands lowly. “What is it with you kreepers and keeping people quiet?”

Jemma ignores the question and instead jumps into several of her own, all of them the standard questions she’s asked Daisy before in a hundred post-mission check-ups, and all of them offered in hopes Daisy will be able to tell her something of value. Luckily, Daisy’s more than up to the task.

“Do you feel any pain?” Jemma asks. “Of any sort?”

“No,” Daisy says, meeting her eyes steadily before sliding her gaze to the Kree. “It’s my friends they hurt.”

While Jemma struggles to appear unaffected by the revelation, Kasius says, “Ah, yes. You asked how she could still be alive after so many years. Apparently the Destroyer traveled through time, along with several of her friends from the past. No doubt trying to escape the mess they created. We’ve been able to suss them out and now they serve as incentive for her good behavior.”

“Fortuitous,” Faulnak says.

Jemma grips the scanner in her hands, willing it not to shake and telling herself to _stop thinking_. Don’t think about the team or about what it was like to live under Kasius or about all those poor people they rescued from CyberTek so long ago and how they’d suffered simply to send a message to their loved ones.

“What about you?” Daisy asks, managing to sound cruel. Jemma doesn’t think anyone else can see the quaver in her set jaw. “How do they control you?”

Jemma shakes her head. “They don’t- not like that. I know my place.” She tries to sound as judgmental as possible, as if Daisy’s need for multiple hostages to keep her in line is a sign of weakness and not strength of will. “What about manscaping?” she asks quickly, before the steel can leave her voice.

“What?” Daisy asks.

“Have you had any done recently?”

“No,” she says slowly, obviously uncertain about Jemma’s use of their safe word. She waits until Jemma’s turning away to add, “That Boshtok guy asked me about that too. He stopped by last night, before we found out this whole auction thing was a big waste of time.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Faulnak says. “There’ll still be a show.” He looks to Jemma. “Are you satisfied?”

She nods once. “She’s in good physical health. But I can’t vouch for her powers while the dampener is active.”

“That’s all right. We’ll see plenty of those soon enough.” He turns and leaves the room, apparently done with all of them.

Jemma returns her scanner to the kit and hands it all over to the guard who carried it in in the first place. He takes it, somewhat reluctantly.

Dred pulls the controller out once more, only to be stopped by Kasius. “Wait,” he says. “What is ‘manscaping’?” he asks her.

“A cosmetic procedure,” Jemma says.

Kasius tips his head dramatically. “And why should that matter as part of a medical exam?”

Jemma hesitates, throwing Dred a look she hopes he won’t interpret as sincerely desperate. He nods, encouraging her to answer.

“It,” she says slowly, “can cause scarring if done inexpertly. I know how you value perfection.”

“You do,” Kasius says. “And you thought I might be trying to unload an inferior product by claiming it to be unique.” He looks to Dred. “I thought she had learned well serving me, but you certainly have taught her loyalty, haven’t you, Dred? You must tell me your secret.”

“Maybe later,” Dred says. “I think I do need that rest you offered. Spending nearly a standard day on your brother’s ship…”

“Not as relaxing as he thinks it to be?” Kasius asks, a warm laugh in his voice. “I didn’t think so. Tobin! Show Dred to his quarters. And make sure the others know he is not to be disturbed.” He motions for Dred to precede him out of Daisy’s cell. Jemma resists the urge to look back. “If there is anything else you need…”

“I’m sure Jemma remembers her way around. I’ll see you at the exhibition.”

“Of course.”

Tobin, a tall, slim man, leads them to a set of quarters and leaves them with a bow. Dred leads the way inside, raising his hand in a halting gesture as soon as he’s through the doorway. From inside his shirt, he pulls a heavy chain at the end of which sits an even heavier pendant. He presses one of the jewels on its rim and the rest light up in a circuit before the central one pulses once.

“No bugs,” he says. “And really? The _Destroyer_?”

“I know,” Jemma says. She sits on the end of the bed. “It’s bad.”

“Bad?” Dred laughs. “Understatement of the century.”

He paces, no doubt trying to wrap his head around this unfortunate development. Hoping to change the subject, she asks, “What does _d’lesh_ mean?”

He pauses halfway back from the door to look at her.

“Faulnak called you that. Twice now.”

He makes a dismissive motion with his hand. “It’s just to piss off Kasius.”

Jemma chooses not to point out that the first time he said it, Kasius was light years away.

“It doesn’t have an exact translation. Probably a more bloody version of ‘brother in arms.’” He drops onto the bed next to her in a slouch that can’t be at all good for his back. “I used to fight for the Kasius family. I was good at my job. Good enough Taryan had a choice: give me the _Awahra_ and let me go it alone, or give me a place in his house. He thought about it— _really_ thought about it; Kasius had just disgraced himself and lost his name and position, so it would’ve been a big message to put me in his place—but I’m still not a Kree. So I got the ship.”

He sounds so lonesome, Jemma can’t help reaching out to touch him, remind him he’s _not_ alone, not anymore. “Is that what you wanted?” she asks.

He chuckles. “Yeah. I wanted the ship. The games and politics aren’t my thing. And I wanted to see for myself it it was true, what they were saying about the Earth.” He shrugs. “Turns out it was.”

“That must have been horrible.” She thinks of that moment with May, when the asteroids cleared and she saw the bus, realized what all that rubble really was. It was a pain she’d felt before, the loss of her whole world, and she knows he’s felt it too because he was right there with her when it happened. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

His hand covers hers and the eyes of the mask are steady on her. “It was. For a lot of reasons.”

Her breath catches in her throat. He thought she was dead. He thought she made it back to Earth without him just to die in the disaster a few short years later. She knows that pain too, but for her it wasn’t a sky full of rocks and rubble, it was the pristine white interior of a containment pod with no one in it. And she wasn’t alone. She had her friends to support her. Who did he have?

She moves on instinct, turning and resting her knees on either side of him on the bed. His hands catch her hips.

“Jemma,” he breathes.

“I know,” she says, thinking of the mask and the problem it presents. “Just-” She doesn’t know what he should _just_ , so rather than finish the sentence, she grips the mask and turns his face to one side so that she can kiss his neck.

He shudders against her, says her name again. His hands flex on her hips like he’s thinking of letting her go but can’t.

She slides his coat off his shoulders.

“We have a job to do,” he says.

“You told Kasius we were going to rest,” she reminds him. “If anyone sees you out there now, he’ll be suspicious.”

“You don’t-” She can hear him gulping down the words so she kisses his Adam’s apple on her way to the other side of his neck. He shudders again but this time doesn’t attempt to let her go. “You don’t know-”

“I do.” She knows exactly what she’s doing and who she’s doing it with. She hesitates, on the verge of taking off her top. “Or do you not want to? You are injured.” She’s been careful to keep on his right side to hide the limited motion of that arm, but for all she knows his Asgardian blood has fully healed it by now.

He buries a hand in her hair. “Oh, don’t ask me that.” The hand drops heavily to her neck and the choker resting there.

She grips his hand in both of hers and deftly loosens the fingers before pulling off the glove so that she can kiss his fingertips. “I know my place,” she says. She can feel the acquiescence in the relaxing of his muscles and, before he can do anything about it, quickly reaches around him, into the folds of his fallen coat. “But I also like kissing. So if you’re so afraid of having me see you properly…” She hisses in a breath as the implant activates again, this time turned up farther than it’s ever been before.

“What the hell are you-” He wrenches the controller away from her and her hands flutter after, trying to stop him.

“It’s all right,” she says and is relieved to hear that it really is. She can still hear her own voice. “Now I can’t see anything except a lot of shadows and blurred colors.”

She reaches for the silver-blue of the mask. She can feel his pulse pounding beneath her thighs. Slowly, so slowly he could stop her if he truly wanted to, she lifts the mask away. Without the mask to impede it, she can hear his ragged breathing. He’s so afraid.

She takes his face between her hands, careful that she doesn’t poke him in the eye and completely ruin the mood. Once she has him, she pulls him to her for that kiss.

Their first kiss has always been one of the best of her life. It was the kiss that restored her hope, that brought her back to life. And with this kiss she finally gets to return the favor.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a pretty substantial quote in here that I pulled straight from the show (you'll know it when you see it). Usually I don't like to do that if I can help it but in this case I felt the character in question probably rehearsed what they were going to say and it felt wrong to change it based on the circumstances.

 

 _Sad thing is, you can still love someone and be wrong for them.  
_ —Elvis Presley

 

She rests in his arms, happy just to be with him and feel the simple pleasure of his fingers tracing her skin. She knows her friends are in danger and she can’t even begin to deal with the magnitude of the disaster she narrowly escaped in the past, but she’s grateful. Grateful to fate or god or the capricious universe for giving her back this man after everything.

He turns his face into hers, kissing the corner of her lips. His breath is hot and thick. His hair tugs at hers where their scalps meet. “I love you,” he says.

Her heart leaps in her chest. The words— _I love you too—_ spring to her lips. She would very likely say them except that he slides out from beneath her before she can and they get lodged in her throat.

He’s on his feet, shaking out his fallen pants or shirt or even his coat, Jemma can’t be sure which. She doesn’t want to say it like this, with him distracted and her unable to even see him properly. It’s always been one of her biggest regrets, that she never got to tell him before, and she wants to do it right now.

He gets the pants on and bends over to grab something else. Light flares in Jemma’s vision and a pulse pounds through her head. For a moment she can’t see a thing, then she can. The mask. Dred. Inches from her face.

“Are you okay? Can you see okay? You can hear me now?”

“Yes, I’m fine, I-” It hits her like a punch. He didn’t know it was just her vision she compromised. He’s such a bloody, beautiful idiot sometimes; that certainly hasn’t changed. “I’m fine,” she says again.

He recoils, leaving behind the controller on the bed beside her. “Are you sure? Did I hurt you?”

She reaches out to grab his fisted hand. “ _No_. It was very good.”

“You’re sure?”

She laughs. She can’t help it when their first time together on Maveth was followed by much the same conversation. He was so worried about having crossed a line, he didn’t consider how emphatically pleased she’d been throughout.

She twists her legs beneath her so that she might go up on her knees and take his masked face between her hands. She curls her fingers in his hair and rests her thumbs just past the edge of the mask beneath his ears. “I am very, very sure,” she says, just as she did back on Maveth. “And I would show you how sure except that there’s work to be done and I’m fairly certain we’ve wasted enough time to prevent anyone getting suspicious.”

“You mean suspicious that you’re _not_ here to have sex with me?”

There’s that practical humor she’s missed. “That I’m here to do more than that.” She makes a point of holding onto him for support while she climbs off the bed, letting her body brush against his. If his faint grunt is any indication, he’s as sorry they have a mission to get back to as she is.

She’s careful not to hide while getting dressed. No turning away to hide herself from his view or artful draping of her clothes over herself before she can get them on. She’s not ashamed of what they’ve done and the last thing she wants is to let him think she’s relieved he’s chosen to hide from her.

“What was that you said,” he asks, “to the Destroyer-”

“Daisy.”

“To Daisy. About … manscaping?”

“Oh!” She’d almost forgotten. She practically leaps across the room to give Will her necklace. She turns her back on him, holding up her hair so he can more easily clasp it. “‘Manscaping’ is our safe word,” she says once he’s gotten over his (frankly, adorable) hesitation. “And she said Boshtok asked about it. We have to find him, he might be willing to help us.”

“No.”

“What?” His answer is so immediate she almost can’t believe it. “If he can help-”

“Boshtok is dangerous,” he says. “He’s been causing trouble all across this sector for years.”

“So have you.”

“That’s different. You know-”

She rests a hand on his chest, silencing him instantly. “I do. But that just means it’s possible this Boshtok person is trustworthy – or at least that his goals align with ours well enough we can use him.”

His chest expands and deflates on a heavy sigh. “Okay. How about this? Our shuttle should’ve docked by now. You go, update Krelah on what we’ve learned and he can take you to search for your friends. I’ll go talk to Boshtok alone, see where he stands.”

Jemma opens her mouth to argue.

“He’s dangerous, Jemma,” Will says. His hand wraps around the back of her neck, gently kneading the base of her skull. “Whatever deal he’s made with Daisy, I don’t want to expose you to him until I have to. Besides, if whatever plan he may or may not have fails…”

She nods. “We’ll need ours as backup.” Seeing as theirs didn’t take into account freeing the Destroyer _and_ several of Kasius’ prisoners, Jemma’s hoping Boshtok’s is more comprehensive, but Will has a point. “All right. Be careful.”

“You too.” She arches up on her toes to kiss the hinge of his jaw where the mask ends, then slips out of his arms before she can doubt herself.

He’s reluctant to let her go and she feels his eyes following her until the door closes between them. She feels much the same. There’s so much left unsaid and things are so unsteady here. She really should have borrowed Bobbi and Hunter’s line and told him not to die out there.

The memory of her friends—both of whom are surely long dead—tangles in her gut as she makes her way to the docking platform. She has so few people left and they’re counting on her. That in mind, she picks up her pace, going as fast as she can without drawing undue attention.

She’s a slave on an errand for her master. Nothing more. Nothing to be suspicious about. No reason for anyone to-

All at once her feet skid to a stop beneath her. A wave of cold prickles over her skin and she’d think she’d gone numb if her heart weren’t pounding so painfully in her chest.

At the next crossing is a man. Leather jacket, a ragged scarf, and a profile she’d know anywhere.

Maybe he feels her looking or heard her stumbling or he’s just looking around to figure where to go next, regardless Fitz turns and sees her.

“Jemma.” She doesn’t hear him say it, only sees his mouth form the word and then he’s rushing to her, stopping only briefly to check that the corridor really is abandoned before embracing her tightly.

“Fitz,” she says, arms coming up on instinct to return the hug. “How- What- You’re _here_.”

He laughs and pulls back, throwing another look around before taking a pointed step back. “Yeah. I found out what happened to you guys and followed. What about you? Daisy said they’d lost you. Kasius-”

“He sold me,” she says quickly.

“ _Sold_ you?” Fitz’s eyes drop to her necklace. Then lower, to the outfit that seemed so perfect for her cover just yesterday. Now it seems a rather unfortunate choice.

“It’s all right. Actually, the man he sold me to is helping me free the others.” She brightens, thinking of the security of the _Awahra’s_ shuttle. “Come on, I’ll explain everything-”

“Wait.” Fitz’s hand closes around her arm, holding her fast. They’re very close suddenly and she’s preternaturally aware of everything about him – the strength of his fingers, the open edge of his jacket brushing her hand, the warmth rolling off him. “You sure you’re okay?”

“ _Yes_.” She tugs gently but he doesn’t release her arm.

He smiles, sliding his thumb over her elbow. “Good. I’m glad. I-” He breathes deep and when he meets her eyes, there’s an intensity in his gaze that used to make her warm. “I’ve missed you so much. I promised myself the next time I saw you, I wouldn’t waste any time.” His hand drops to hers. Warm. Familiar. “I spent six months in an off-the-books military prison, not to mention eighty years frozen in space just hoping to find you.”

“Frozen? What?” She looks him up and down, wondering just what he’s been through in the intervening years. She’d assumed he simply followed using the monolith. Far from her preferred method of travel but in this case infinitely safer than exposing oneself to decades of uncertainty floating around a sector of space in constant physical and political upheaval. 

His hand squeezes hers, pulling her attention back to his face. “And here you are.” He smiles and that chill is back, bringing with it a certainty she doesn’t like at all. “I realized something in all that time. The universe can’t stop us. We’ve crossed galaxies, we’ve traveled through time-”

“Fitz.” She pulls her hand away. “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.” She knows him, she knows what he’s on the verge of asking her. And she knows that if he does, there’s only one answer she can give him. “We have a job to do.”

“There’s always a job to do,” he says, looking a little put out. “A mission to run or someone to save or a fix to produce out of nowhere. Jemma, I’m trying to ask you-”

“I thought we were done,” she says quickly, like pulling off a plaster. “After the Framework, I thought …” She shrugs helplessly and wraps her arms around herself. Just a few minutes ago she was wrapped up in Will’s arms, warm and safe and-

No. No, she won’t think about him. Fitz at least deserves her attention while she’s breaking his heart.

But oh, she hates to give it to him. He looks like she’s shot him. “Because of Aida?” he croaks.

“No.” That would be the easy answer—she saw him with another woman and, even though none of that is his fault at all, she can’t look past it. Only she can. She can accept that he didn’t know her in that life, that he found love elsewhere. It’s everything else she can’t deal with.

“It wasn’t me,” he says. “I swear, Jemma. That guy, he wasn’t me. He was just something the Framework made.”

“This isn’t about the doctor.” She’s gotten so good at lying. Half-truths are best and this is certainly that.

A flash of blue at the next corner catches her attention. She drops her head, adopting the deferential posture she learned well while living here.

“Excuse me,” she says. “I am on business for Captain Dred. If there is anything you need, I am sure Kasius’ servants will be happy to help.”

She steps away. Even, steady steps that take her past the Kree—to whom she nods respectfully—and onward towards the docking platform.

She tries to breathe steadily. Being so near Fitz without any time to prepare herself was almost too much. Even after months and time travel and enslavement and everything else, her body can’t be close to him without remembering that moment—the pain of a knee that would never heal, the gun at her head, his voice so cold and cruel—but that was only the last in a long string of moments. This would be so much easier if she didn’t have to explain.

But Fitz is catching up to her and though she can’t turn to look at him, she can feel the pressure of his gaze well enough to know he’s wearing that same look he always has when he knows the answer to their current dilemma lies in her area of expertise rather than his. She owes him this answer.

“You were saying that we’ve been through a lot,” she says softly, mindful there might be enemies around every corner. “But that’s all we ever seem to do. We’re never closer than when we’ve just overcome something—Maveth or parallel dimensions or any one of a thousand near-death experiences we’ve both had—but when it’s just us, we fall apart.”

“That’s not true-”

“It is,” she says firmly. This is no time to argue, especially when she’s right. “Whenever we’re not fighting against outside forces to be together, we lose touch. We barely spoke in the months before Eli Morrow attacked and most of that was lies and fighting.”

“We were busy. Everything had changed-”

“I know. And I know a lot of that is my fault, I’m not pretending otherwise. But, Fitz, I-” She doesn’t know how else to say it without being cruel. “I thought you were dead.”

“And that we were over.”

She dares a glance at him. He looks awful. She wants, more than anything, to hug him. But doing so would only make matters worse.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

They’re nearing the platform and the crowds that come with it. “I have to go.”

“Because your _master_ says so?” he asks.

She gives him a look that says she’s not interested in revisiting something she already explained. “No. I have to tell his people about Daisy and the others.” And she and Fitz really do need to touch base more. What is he doing just wandering around here? “You can come.”

“Yeah, all right.”

He falls back, following at a distance. She fears that he’ll be recognized as an outsider, but there are no cries of ‘intruder!’ and no guards move to intercept him. In fact one or two people stop to chat with him on the way and has to slow her steps to prevent being lost.

Clorik is standing guard at the docking port and she manages to say a quick “He’s with me” on her way past him. Inside, Krelah sits on a large, tarp-covered crate, and Jemma rushes to his side.

“What are you doing here?” Even with Will mentioning him, it didn’t occur to her until she saw him that he was _injured_ the last time she saw him and should be back on the ship.

“I’m fine.” He pats her hand with a smile and lifts his neck frill, showing off the deep green edging. “See? Green. I got too overheated on that station is all.”

“Jemma?” Fitz asks from behind her at the same moment Krelah’s hand stiffens on hers.

“It’s all right,” she says quickly. “This is Fitz. He’s one of my friends.”

“Found him that quickly, did you?” Krelah asks, his hand still noticeably on his blaster.

“Actually, no. He found me.” She turns to face Fitz, putting herself somewhat between him and Krelah. “What were you doing wandering around? And did those people know you?”

“Yeah, about that.” He rubs at the back of his neck. “My cover story is kind of that I’m a marauder here for the auction.”

“Have you been able to find the others yet?” That would save them a lot of time and effort.

“No, just Daisy. Enoch’s looking to see where Kasius is keeping the rest.”

“Enoch?” Jemma asks at the same time Krelah echoes, “‘Keeping’ them?”

“He helped me get to the future. It’s a long story.”

Jemma doesn’t like the sound of that. And Fitz is supposedly a marauder? Boshtok, she thinks. Or this Enoch person is. Which means Will has wasted a trip. Regardless, she has other explanations to make.

“Daisy is the Destroyer,” she says to Krelah. “The Inhuman Faulnak’s come to collect.”

He leans back lifting his legs to keep from overbalancing on the crate. That and the fact he hasn’t gotten up this whole time makes Jemma wonder if his assertion he’s fine was entirely accurate.

“Great,” he says. “And the other ones? I don’t imagine they’ll be any easier to sneak away?”

Jemma shakes her head. “Kasius is keeping them as insurance against Daisy’s good behavior.”

“Well, that makes things quite a lot harder.”

“Or easier?” she says hopefully. “We know they’re all here on the lower levels.”

“Possibly. If Kasius is especially dumb.”

Jemma chooses not to answer that and Krelah chuckles.

“Yes, agreed. But unless their cells are marked ‘friends of the Destroyer’ they’ll be a lot more difficult to find. I can’t take you along to those sorts of areas, even disguised, too many people down here will recognize you.”

“I can help with that,” Fitz says. He meets Jemma’s stare. “You trust these people?”

“Absolutely.”

His mouth thins into a line but he reaches into his coat to produce a creased photo. Jemma catches sight of it as he hands it over to Krelah. It’s from- goodness, nearly two years ago. (Relatively speaking, of course.) Hunter’s birthday—the last one they got with him—which he had tried not to make a fuss over on account of her being in mourning, but she made it her mission to help Bobbi throw him a proper party as her first big step back into the world.

“Not those two in the middle,” Fitz says, pointing to Bobbi and Hunter. “But everyone else.”

Krelah’s frill lifts like fingers tapping as he considers the image. “Which one is the Destroyer?”

“This one.” Jemma leans over, pointing out Daisy. Good thing she’ll stand out among the Lighthouse’s prisoners because her face has been distorted by a crease in the photo. There’s another one, cleanly marking off where Fitz and Jemma are posed beside one another. She pushes aside the guilty ache in her heart to point to Lincoln next to Daisy. “And not him either.”

Krelah looks to her. “The captain knows about all of this?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Four people, not counting the Destroyer. Shouldn’t be too hard to pin them down.”

“And then what?” Fitz asks. “How do you plan to get them out after you find them?”

Krelah’s frill lifts on one side in consideration, but he isn’t the one who answers.

“We don’t,” Will says. He’s standing in the doorway with a tall, blue man who Jemma is fairly certain isn’t a Kree.

She’s aware again of how close Fitz is to her. Does Will recognize him? It’s been so long and he only had her videos to go off of.

But his hand is fisted at his side and she can see the tension in his shoulders from here. Whether he remembers or not, he’s not happy there’s a stranger on board.

She slips past Fitz to worm her fingers into that fist, forcing it to relax. “This is Fitz,” she says. “One of my friends.”

“Also known as Boshtok the Marauder,” Will says. “I’ve heard of you.”

“That was mostly Enoch’s doing,” Fitz says, gesturing to the man behind Will. “I’ve been asleep for the past eighty years. What was that you said about us _not_ rescuing our friends?”

“Faulnak wants the Destroyer. He’ll take her on his ship and I’ll convince him it’s safer if her friends are on the _Awahra_. A lot easier to let the Kree hand us what we want than to steal it.”

“That still leaves Daisy enslaved to Kasius’ psycho big brother.”

Close as she is, Jemma can see the muscles in Will’s neck tighten. She thinks he might be smiling. “In this family, psychosis is relative. And we can deal with that later. Right now the priority is making sure everyone gets off the Lighthouse.” He turns to Krelah. “Which means making sure Kasius doesn’t hold any of the Destroyer’s friends in reserve.”

Krelah nods and stands. “I’ll get searching.”

“I shall accompany you,” Enoch says.

Fitz hesitates, clearly torn, before rushing after them. “Wait! Hold up!”

Once his footsteps stop rattling the shuttle, Jemma lifts her head to face Will. “Sorry,” she says.

“For what?”

“You didn’t want me meeting Boshtok without you. But in my defense, I didn’t know I’d already met him.”

He chuckles.

“What about Daisy?” she asks. “Do you really think you’ll be able to get her away from Faulnak?”

He shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know. He won’t make it easy.”

“And us?”

He stiffens.

“That’s why you want my friends on the _Awahra_ , isn’t it? So Faulnak won’t be able to destroy it when he finds out you don’t have that army.”

Some of the tension leaks out of him. “That’s part of it, yeah.” He lifts a hand as if to brush her hair back, only to stop at the last minute. She knows why. He’s thinking of Fitz, thinking he’s just someone she was passing time with while waiting to get back to him. He really is an idiot sometimes.

She catches the hand and holds it to her cheek. His breath stutters through the mask.

“I promise you,” he says, “I’m gonna do everything I can to save them all.”

“I know you will. And I’ll do whatever you need me to to protect the _Awahra_ , you know that, right?”

His head has bent close to hers, close enough she feels the scrape of metal at her scalp when he nods. “I do.”

She wants to tell him about Fitz—that she didn’t know he was alive, that it doesn’t change anything—but then she’d have to explain why he would even think that. And she’d much rather stay here, holding him, for as long as she can.

 


End file.
